M Ali Notes

Riders to the Sea as a modern drama in classical form

2015-10-05T21:13:00.000+06:00

Riders to the Sea is a modern drama, a one act play, written by J.M. Synge, a modern dramatist. In spite of that, this play follows some of the characteristics of the ancient classical tragedies. Again, though its setting and theme are very simple, taken from the Aran Islands of Ireland, isolated from its mainland, ‘it wins its own time’ and becomes universal because of the main character’s turning from a simple and common mother to universal mother and of having a universal philosophy. In this sense, it is also a classical art. Now, we will see how the play becomes a classical one.

At first, we see that the playwright, in this play, follows the classical three unities – unity of time, unity of place and unity of action.

The unity of time:

In classical tragedies, we see that all the actions take place within a single day; we can mention the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. Similarly, the span of actions of ‘Riders to the Sea’ is not more than a day. The previous actions or incidents are revealed by the characters – Maurya, Nora, Cathleen.

The unity of place:

According to this unity, all the actions must take place in a single place. In classical ‘King Oedipus’, all the actions are presented in front of the royal palace. In the same way, in this play, the fixed place is the ‘Cottage Kitchen’ of Maurya’s family. Though there are some incidents, scenes and conversation of some other places – such as Donegal, far north, Galway fair, the Sea by the white rocks, Connemara, green head, the pier, spring well, the black cliffs of the north, and the rocks, these places do not appear before the audience. Rather, these are reported or told by the characters.

The unity of action:

This unity indicates that in a classical art, there must be a single plot and single story. It does not allow any sub plot. On the contrary, in non classical literature, we find more than one plot or story. For example, in Shakespearean drama ‘The Merchant of Venice’, the main story is about a merchant, Antonio, and his friend. Besides, there are some other stories about Lorenzo-Jessica, about Gratiano Nerrissa and about Casket scene. In Riders to the Sea, Maurya is the round character. There is only a single plot and story – Maurya’s losing all the sources of living and her reaction.

Role of fate:

In classical literature, fate has a dominant role. It can be said that ‘fate is destiny’. For example, Oedipus wanted to escape from the prophesy of Oracle – he did not want to kill his father and marry his mother, but according to fate, he had to do these very deeds. However, in Elizabethan drama, especially Shakespearean drama, we find ‘character is destiny’. For example, Shylock was punished for his own vice. In fact, in modern drama, these traditions are turned into ‘society is destiny’ that is society is responsible for character’s destiny. Now, in spite of its being a modern drama, Riders to the Sea follows the classical tradition. The characters are operated by their fate. Their fate is fixed. The male members of them are farmers or fisher men. They are to go to the mainland across the sea, on account of earning their livelihood. Thus during the time on the sea all of the male members, by their fate are to be drowned in the sea one after another. However, in this way they surrender to the fate.

Chorus:

Chorus is another element of classical literature. The main responsibility of the chorus is to express the past events. In this play, there is no definite chorus, but the characters sometimes act like chorus. For example, Maurya remembers the death of her husband and sons. Again her daughters report about Michael.

Universality:

In another sense, if any literary piece wins its own time and become universal, we call it classical art. In this play, at first Maurya represents the Aran Islander mother – she believes in superstition. She is only Bartley’s mother. Then, being left by all the male members of her family, she accepts the truth of their life and their fate and by this surrendering to the fate she becomes a universal mother from only Bartley’s mother. She says –

“May the Almighty God have mercy on Bartley’s soul, and on Michael’s soul, and on the souls of Sheamus and Patch, and Stephen and Shawn, and May He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of every one is left living in the world.”

Again,

“What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living for ever, And we must be satisfied” (universal philosophy)

Considering the above discussion, it has been clear that though Riders to the Sea, as product, is a modern play, it possesses the classical ideals and becomes a universal one.

The character of Maurya in the Riders to the Sea: an individual mother transformed to a universal one

2014-12-29T12:25:00.000+06:00

The character, Maurya in the one act play ‘Riders to the Sea’, is a wonderful creation of J.M. Synge. He characterizes this old Aran Islander mother at a very critical moment of her life. From Synge’s portrayal, a perfect and tragic picture of Maurya occupies our mind.

Maurya is a sorrowful figure who represents all the mother of the island; they, being compelled, have to sacrifice their husbands and young sons to the sea, on account of earning their livelihood. In the same way, Maurya loses her husband and six sons one by one; and this kind of events in anybody’s life is undoubtedly a matter of extreme sorrow. But their lives do not stop.

Then, she is religious but experienced by the rude Atlantic. She regularly prays to God to save her sons and believes in God. But, when Nora says “Didn’t the young priest say the Almighty God won’t leave her destitute with no son living?”, she says “It’s little the like of him knows of the sea….. Bartley will be lost now..?” It indicates that the sea used to play cruel game with them.

Though she is attacked by an indescribable grief, she does not forget the things relating to the family. Having past nine days after Michael’s going out, she bears a miserably mental condition. At this very time too, she looks after her family. She says “Isn’t it turf enough you have for this day and evening?”

Indeed, Maurya has deep affection for her sons especially for Bartley. She prohibits again and again from his going to the trip to sell the horse. Because the weather is so bad that he must fall in a rough time on the sea. She tells that she has no need of money, wealth and horses, if he, only living male member of the family, is not alive. She says “If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had itself, what is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?” When he does not listen to her prohibition, she says “its hard set will be surely the day you’re drowned with the rest. What way will I live and the girls with me and I am old woman looking for the grave;” At last, when he is still on his decision, she bitterly says “Isn’t it a hard and cruel man won’t hear a word from an old woman, and she holding him from the sea?” All these statements of Maurya come from her extreme affection for her son.

However, she has a foresight to understand the coming danger. Cathleen and Nora do not believe in the death of Michael until they have not got proof. But, Maurya understands that Michael must have died. And so, she has made the white boards brought, to make coffin. For the same reason, she goes to the sea shore everyday for the sake of receiving the dead body, if it is washed up. Again, when Bartley leaves the house to go to sea, breaking Maurya’s prohibition, she says “He’s gone now, God spare us, and we’ll not see him again. He’s gone now, and when the black night is falling I’ll have no son left me in the world.” These premonitions in Maurya’s thought and behavior may come from her long hard existence in the world and bitter experiences of cruelty of the sea, or from her instinct.

Maurya is a superstitious and mysterious woman. She shows argument against Bartley’s going to the sea- “that wind is rising the sea, and there was a star up against the moon, and it rising in the night” that means, this rare incident must be eventful. Again, seeing Michael’s riding on the pony is nothing but Maurya’s hallucination that is the result of failing to bestow the bread, and to wish him God’s bliss. Since earlier she uttered bad things on account of failing to stop him from going to the sea in a rough weather.

At last of the play, we see that Maurya in not only the mother of Bartley or Micheal, but she prays “May the Almighty God have mercy on Bartley’s soul, and on Michacl’s soul, and stiphen and Shawn; and may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of everyone is left living in the world.” So, she transforms from an individual mother to a universal mother. Moreover, she is an idol of patience- she does not break down; suffering a long way of grief, she utterly surrenders to the fate. She says “Michael has a clear burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin of the white boards, and a deep grave than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.”

Nature of love and marriage in The Duchess of Malfi

2014-12-25T20:40:00.000+06:00

Love is a most important word in the world. It is the vital power in the whole world. It can not properly be defined in words. Yet we can say love is an “emotion explored in philosophy, religion and literature, often as either romantic love, the fraternal love of others or the love of God.” In Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, there is a love affair between two persons of unequal ranks which paves the way for developing a lot of conflicts and bloodshed and revenge. Hence the nature of love and marriage of the Duchess towards the steward of the household may be treated as unusual to many other instances of love affair. A further discussion will clarify the idea.

In order to survive in the world, the human body requires to fulfill thirst, hunger and desires. Similarly human mind also needs some emotional requirements – Love, Compassion, Affection, Pity, Sympathy etc. Therefore it is very usual that the Duchess of Malfi will seek love from her lover. But the problem lies elsewhere – there are some social restrictions for her.

è Firstly, she is a widow. And a second marriage or offering love for a second time of a woman is not approved by her contemporary social and religious set up. For examples, her brother Ferdinand discourages her saying –

“Marry! They are most luxurious

Will wed twice.”

è Secondly, the Duchess is a woman of high rank and she lives in such a period which looks at the social hierarchy as something God-made. Therefore it is very much unusual and objectionable for the Duchess to love and marry such a man, the steward of her household who is below her own social rank.

èMoreover, the lower ranked people dare not offer their love to upper ranked people. So, if any of upper class people wants to make love with a lower class one, he or she themselves should be take initiative, as says the Duchess –

“The misery of us that are born great!

We are forced to woo, because none dare woo us;

However, it has been proved through ages that love does not obey any difference between nations, age or social ranks, and many like Helen, Cleopatra have made the examples of unusual love affairs. Hence, the Duchess of Malfi offers her love to a below ranked steward, disregarding all restrictions –

“I do here put off all vain ceremony and only do appear to you a young widow that claims you for her husband and like a widow, I use but half a blush in it.”

Finally she performs her marriage in an unusual manner and situation, and keeps it a secret. The result, as Antonio tells Delis, is that –

“The common rabble do directly say

she is a strumpet.”

Hence, though her love is, in these ways, unusual, it does not occur whimsically and it is unlike other accidental love affairs. Actually she has been a widow at her very young age, and being a woman of flesh and blood she has been in crying need of making a relationship with a male for the sake of her physical and mental thirst. In the text we can get many examples providing that the love of the Duchess is un-accidental.

As we mentioned earlier, the Duchess, being a woman of higher rank and being restricted by her brothers will, cannot directly offer her love to Antonio. But she has largely felt the importance of a second marriage in her life, and has decided cold-headed to do that. However, to motivate Antonio, she makes ‘equivocal’ speeches and activities. She causes her ‘wedding-ring’, that can only be offered to her second husband, to touch his eyes which seems to be ‘blood-shot’, in order ‘to help’ his ‘eye-sight’ and to make him conscious that she wants him to be the second husband. Moreover, she wants Antonio uplift his position and so she ‘equivocates’-

“This goodly Yoof of yours is too low built;

I can not stand upright in’t nor discourse

Without I raise it higher: raise yourself;

Or you please, my hand to help you:”

Then Antorio, having been convinced and having asked about her brothers, the Duchess answers practically –

“yet, should they know it, time will easily

scatter the tempest.”

After that, as per decision taken earlier, she makes cariola a witness of their secret marriage which is justified with her speech –

“I have heard lawyers say, a contract in a chamber

per verba presents is absolute marriage.”

As a result of their secret marriage they fall in such a situation that they may any time be in horrible condition. Even at that time she assures –

“whether I am doomed to live or die

I can do both like a prince”

Hence, if she had accidentally loved Antonio, she must have become broken hearted in such a situation.

When Antonio and his son’s lives fall in danger, even at that time, the Duchess requests her husband to escape to Milan with her child and her wealth –

Therefore by all my love I do conjure you

To take your eldest son, and fly towards Milan

Let us not venture all this poor remainder

In one unlucky bottom.

How eagerly she thinks of her husband and the child without thinking of herself!

Bosola having advised her to forget Antonio by addressing him ‘one of no birth’, the Duchess confesses “that he was born mean” but

‘man is most happy when’s own actions

be arguments and examples of his virtue.”

That is, the Duchess loves Antonio’s virtue rather than his identity.

In order to torture the Duchess mentally and change her view of her husband Antorio, Fardinand her brother, after showing her a dead man’s want arranges a show before her. There is shown “behind a traverse, the artificial figures of Antonio, and his children, appearing as if they were dead”. Seeing such a scene, she becomes mentally weak but her love for Antorio does not loose. She says that she “would account” it “mercy”, she says,

“if they would bind me to that lifelen trunk

and let me freeze to death.”

Further, Fardinand sends madmen and executioners with a coffin, cords and a bell to the Duchess with a view to making her frightened. But at the time of such a fearful moment, the Duchess does not loose the sense of her dignity. She says,

“I am Duchess of Malfi still”

and

“it affrights not me.”

And even at the time of her worst situation, when people can not generally think of others, she requests Cariola to bring up her children –

“I pray thee, look thou giv’st my little boy

some syrup for his cold, and let the girl

say her prayers.

Thus, the Duchess of Malfi reminds us of the mother in the Riders to the Sea.

Moreover, in stead of having been strangled, the Duchess does not die fully. She survives again for a few moments, and her first and last word from her mouth is ‘Antorio’, her love.

Basing on the above discussion, we must say that the love of the Duchess is unusual to the accidental lovers. Her making love affair, treatment of love and consequence of it are also unusual. But her love is not like that of those who love whimsically without thinking much as an accident happens. She, however, in worst consequences of her love affair, does not become loose hearted and her love for Antonio does not decrease. Moreover, her thinking for her children, the fruits of her love, is no doubt praiseworthy.

Milton’s arguments in favor of freedom of press and expression in Areopagitica against the licensing order of June 1943

2014-12-23T06:58:00.000+06:00

Areopagitica, a great pamphlet as well as a powerful piece of literature, is regarded as a standard defense of freedom of print and publication, though accomplished nothing at the time. It was written as an oration addressing both the houses; he himself was not a member of the parliament. It was a protest against the licensing order, passed by the contemporary parliament which argued the parliament to reconsider the order, showing bad effects of it; expressing a number of arguments in favour of reading all sorts of books as well as of freedom of press and expression. It also argues that if the purpose is to prevent the spread of ideas opposite to them, it will not be fulfilled, because there are many other ways to spread ideas. (So, we should not impose any licensing order or censorship.)

At first we are to know clearly what the licensing order is. The licensing order passed by the English parliament in June 1643 was designed to regulate and control the publication of newspaper, books pamphlets, tracts etc. It said “no books, pamphlets, or paper shall be henceforth printed, unless the same be first approved and licensed” by an authority or committee consisting of twenty men chosen from amongst the clergy.

Milton, praises the members of both lords and commons of England who have proceeded much in the way of liberty – however Milton says that his speech is not flattery and he is totally conscious of his position. So, he says to them that he does not advocate for a Utopia where ‘no grievance ever should arise’ but such a liberty where “complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.” As a result, Milton hopes that his appeal will be granted.

Milton does not deny the right or duty of the church and the government to keep a cautious eye upon the books published in the country. He does also not deny the power of books which are here compared to the mythological dragon’s teeth –

“I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may change to spring up armed men.”

But in order to suppress any bad effect of any book, if a good book is unfortunately destroyed, it will be more than killing a man and the loss is immeasurable. Milton argues the loss of barring/banning a good book in the following way –

“Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills the reason itself,” because “A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life”.

“The execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, which is more precious for a matter than other four elements, namely fire, water, earth and air.”

Now Milton shows a number of arguments in favour of reading all sorts of books as well as of freedom of thought and expression and deed:

Moses, Daniel and Paul were famous and skillful in all learning which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts.

“Julian the Apostate made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning,” because he thought that by keeping them away from reading other books he would be able to make their knowledge limited.

If we want to be governed by dream, there is a dream recorded by Eusebius who after having been confused of reading all sorts of books, was ordered in a dream – “Read any books whatever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each matter.”

“To the pure all things are pure, not only meats and drinks but all kinds of knowledge whether of good or evil; the knowledge can not defile; nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled.”

Without any restriction God ordered Peter in a vision, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” Again, God supplied ‘manna’, a kind of food, to the Jews more than their need. Comparing reading with eating Milton says that as God himself does not impose any restriction upon eating, we also should not impose any censorship on reading or printing books.

Knowing, reading and collecting al sorts of opinion even the false ones help us to reach the truest one.

If we are to be governed by law and compulsion, what is the need of preaching?

Good and evil in this world are intermixed more inseparably than those confused seeds, imposed on ‘Psyche’ – a mythological character – to cull out. For this reason, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden could properly know the good after knowing the evil.

Milton says, “Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.” So without knowing both good and evil properly we can not pass the trial. For this reason, in order to know both good and evil we can not but read all sorts of books. However, in this case, our conscience will help us to be governed by the good.

Then Milton says that if the purpose of the licensing order is to prevent the spread of ideas, opposite to theirs and to prevent the infection resulted from books, it will not be fulfilled. Because books are merely one of the many other ways of communication and of spreading ideas. Milton says, “Evil manners are as perfectly earned without books a thousand other ways which can not be stopped.”

Moreover, Milton compares the licensing order to “the exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate.” It suggests that since by shutting the park gate, we can not prevent the crows to enter into the park, by licensing order, we can also not prevent the spread of ideas.

Proofs for the existence of God

2014-12-21T22:08:00.001+06:00

God, a religious term for the supreme reality, has, from the ancient time to the present, occupied a central position in various forms in almost every religious and philosophical discussion except atheism. Generally man loves to think God to be the Creator of the whole universe, the ultimate source of knowledge, power and love without any question. The philosophers from the ancient period have tried to prove the existence of God with raising a question “Does He exist at all?” and giving answers to this question.

However, there are three main groups of people on the basis of believing in the existence of God:

1. Atheists: never believe in God’s existence

2. Agnostics: not sure about God’s existence

3. Theists: believe in the existence of God

Now we will attempt to prove the existence of God from the philosophical point of view. The philosophers mainly provide four kinds of arguments to prove the existence of God. They are:

1. The Ontological Argument

2. The Teleological Argument

3. The Cosmological Argument

4. The Moral Argument

Now we will discuss them in details.

The first proof of God’s existence is the Ontological Argument or Metaphysical Argument which is completely based on reason. According to this argument, there is no need to go out looking for the physical evidence of God’s existence. One can work out that He exists just by thinking about it. Philosophers call such argument a “prior” argument. St. Anselm, Descartes have initiated this argument.

Anselm says:

“We have the previous idea about perfect being; this perfect being is God.”

“We are to admit the Existence in Necessity, this Existence is God.”

Descartes says:

“We have previous idea of God. This idea is given by God in our heart”

“Men are limited. So for limited men, it is not possible to create other limited things. But God is unlimited; so for God it is possible to create everything.”

Criticism: Ontological Argument or Metaphysical Argument does not go without criticism. Different critics argue against such arguments in different ways. Some of them are:

Only idea cannot prove anything.

“We have previous idea of God.” It is not logical.

The idea about truth, perfect being etc. is negative.

Existence is not a quality but a reality.

The second proof of God’s existence is the Teleological Argument or the argument from design. It seeks the proof of the existence of God from the fact that the universe is ordered.

Martineau argues that the selection, combination, gradation, adaption, order etc. found in natural things and human organisms prove the existence of God as an intelligent designer of the world.

Without any purpose nothing is created. This world has a purpose after its creation. This purpose is the purpose of God.

Criticism:

1. To prove the existence by purpose is difficult.

2. To prove the purpose by experience is also difficult.

3. Only action and purpose cannot prove the existence of God.

4. There are some regularities and irregularities in every action.

The third proof of God’s existence is the Cosmological Argument. According to this argument, there is a cause after the creation of the world. There is a previous cause that is God. The world is probable, but the God is eternal entity. So it is easy for God to create this type of world.

The criticism of this evidence of God’s existence is:

1. Only cause is not sufficient to prove the existence of God.

2. If He is unlimited, how it is possible for Him to create this type of world.

The fourth proof of God’s existence is The Moral Argument. It seeks to prove the existence of God from the fact that there are moral laws. The moral argument appeals to the existence of moral laws as the evidence of God’s existence. There are some moral senses:

Sense of morality: as a social being, we are to follow some sense of morality. This idea of morality is given by God.

Sense of duty: It is a must in the civilized society which is also given by God.

The criticism of this proof is:

Morality is a relative term.

Morality has no natural existence.

It is an imaginative idea.

It has no value to the non-believers.

Morality leads us to the mind not to the real existence of God.

Last of all we can say that, the fact of the existence of God is a controversial issue in the philosophical discussion. Some of the philosophers have showed the evidence in favour of His existence and some others have gone against. But majority of the philosophers give priority over the fact that “He exists”.

Colonialism in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

2014-10-16T18:50:00.001+06:00

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, a classic in English literature, and regarded by many as the first English novel, has been interpreted in different ways. First it is a religious and moral allegory as stressed by Defoe himself in the Preface. Also, Rousseau was inspired by it to “Return to Nature”. Again Marx regarded it as a meretricious model of economic independence. And above all, the recent studies regard Crusoe as the first colonialist in English literature. Even J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Foe is a re-imaging of Robinson Crusoe on grounds of gender, race and colonialism. On the whole, the colonial approach is one of the major concerns of Robinson Crusoe to the critics and readers: the try to analyze the theme of colonialism in Robinson Crusoe, post colonialism in Robinson Crusoe, Robinson Crusoe colonialism and imperialism or Robinson Crusoe colonialism quotes.

The first part of the story of Robinson Crusoe begins with Crusoe’s being stranded and marooned in an inhabited island, far from the rest of the world. This happens for their ship’s being wrecked in a storm, and only he being left. In such a condition, he begins his struggle for existence and consequently succeeds.

In a sense, Crusoe attempts to replicate his own society or colony on the island. This has been achieved through application of some qualities of Crusoe, and some instruments, and proper handling of different situations.

First, the qualities by dint of which Crusoe has been able to change the island inhabitable to habitable, are his courage, hard struggle with situation, determination, devotion, creativity.

Then, in order to make his colony inhabitable and cultivable, he applies European technology and agriculture. He brings, from the stranded ship, a large number of articles and corps which are useful to him in his desolate condition on the island. These things include several items of food, several weapons e.g. guns and pistols, considerable ammunition including gunpowder, such tools as saws, and axe, a hammer, several bottles of rum, a box of sugar, a hammock, some clothing, some bedding, some money, though useless at that situation, a bag full of chicken feed, a bag full of nails, some corps and a number of other things. Using these things, day after day for a long time Crusoe establishes a society of his own in which there come some other men by accident.

Crusoe establishes “a rudimentary political hierarchy” in the land. Crusoe, several times in the novel, refers to himself as the ‘king’ of the island. In his own word –

“a secret kind of Pleasure... to think that this was all my own, that I was king and lord of all this country indefeasibly, and had a right of Possession.”

Whilst the captain describes him as the “Governour” to the mutineers.

“The idealised master-servant relationship Defoe depicts between Crusoe and Friday can also be seen in terms of cultural imperialism. Crusoe represents the ‘enlightened’ European whilst Friday is the ‘savage’ who can only be redeemed from his supposedly barbarous way of life through the assimilation of Crusoe’s culture.”

Crusoe saves, for his own purpose, a prisoner who was running away from the clutches of some cannibals. When he sees it, he thinks,

“It came now very warmly upon my thoughts, and indeed irresistibly, that now was my time to get me a servant, and perhaps a Companion, or Assistant.”

Crusoe names the prisoner Friday, introduces himself to him as ‘Master’, and teaches him language actually for his own benefit like the colonists. He says –

“I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my Business to teach him every thing, that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to make him speak, and understand me what I speak.”

The colonialists come to colonies with some mission with them. Similarly Crusoe’s mission is to preach. To make it easy and to communicate with Friday he taught him language. When Crusoe knows from him about their false God, Beramucke, he begins preaching –

“I began to instruct him in the knowledge of the true God”

The English sea-captain, having prayed Crusoe to recover his ship from the hands of the mutineers, Crusoe raises two conditions which indicate his colonial attitude of making contact. His conditions are:

“That while you stay on this island with me, you will not pretend to any authority here;”

and

“That if the ship is, or may be recovered, you will carry me and my Man to English passage free.”

Though Crusoe leaves his island for England, he leaves an unseen control over the land. Instead of his being settled in England, he longs for going to adventure again. He makes a voyage to East Indies and to the island which he explicitly calls his “Colony”. He says –

“In this voyage I visited my new Colony in the Island, saw my successors the Spaniards, had the whole story of their lives, and of the Villains I left there.”

We see here, Crusoe is very kind of Friday but there is of course difference between ‘we’ and ‘they’, between my ‘Man’ and my ‘Master’. Actually the relation between the colonizer and the colonized is here soft become both of them are at stake and in initial stage where there is no revolt between them. But we can look into The Tempest where Shakespeare shows the aftermath of teaching language, while there is no aftermath or consequence of colonization in Robinson Crusoe. Caliban complains to his master,

“You taught me language; and my profit on..

Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you

For learning me your language!”

“Nevertheless, within the novel, Defoe also takes the opportunity to criticise the historic Spanish conquest of South America.” Crusoe thinks that if he attacks the cannibals who have come to the shore of his island, it would not be just for him. Rather,

“this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their Barbarities practised in America, and where they destroyed Million’s of these people, who... were yet... very innocent people.”

On the issues of gender, race and colonialism, J.M. Coetzee presents Foe which re-images Robinson Crusoe which lacked female character. Here Coetzee adds a woman, Susan Barton, cast away on the same island as Robinson Crusoe (here called Cruso) and Friday. “After their rescue by a passing merchantman, Crusoe dies aboard the ship and Susan and Friday are left to make their way in England.”

In this novel, Friday is an ugly Negro and mutilated: none knows who has mutilated him. Actually “the pertinence of Friday to black history is not in question: the inaccessibility of his world to the European world is a consequence of colonialist oppression and racism. The mutilation in his mouth is emblematic of Black-African cultural castration operated by the white invaders.”

In fine, we agree with James Joyce that “the true symbol of the British conquest is Robinson Crusoe”:

“He is the true prototype of the British colonists... The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence # the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity.”

Defoe has shown the idealized colonialism of initial stage, but not the after fall stage, as in the Tempest, nor the barbarous result of colonialism, as expressed in Foe.

Oedipus as a tragic hero

2014-05-01T22:47:00.002+06:00

Oedipus, the hero in the play ‘King Oedipus’, is the most distressed, pathetic and touching tragic hero of Sophocles of Greek tragedy and of world tragedy as well. Though he is a man of good virtues, dignity, high birth and position, he suffers the highest mental and physical suffering. Now we will consider Oedipus to be a tragic hero, especially according to Aristotle’s criteria.

According to Aristotle, a tragic hero possesses high birth and high social standing. In the case of Oedipus, we see that Oedipus is born of Lauis, the king, and Jocasta, the queen; he is brought up by Polybus, the king of Corinth, and Merope, the queen later on; he becomes a king and marries a queen, and begets children too. The citizens of Thebes consider him as their father and saviour.

A tragic hero is a man of excellent qualities, and good in his character, behaviour and action. In this case, we observe that Oedipus is simultaneously a good father, husband and above all such a king who is active in his duties, speedy in decision, and eager to know the truth. When the citizens are assembled in front of the royal palace to request him to do something as their saviour against the deplorable condition of the country, Oedipus himself faces them inspite of sending his servent to know the matter. In addition, in the meantime, he has already sent Creon to the Pythian house of Apollo to know what could be done in that situation. So, we may also say that he believes in God. Again, in order to receive some effective direction or foreword or Oracle, he sends a man to Teirasias to get him brought to him. Then, though Teiresias and Jocasta prophibits him from investigating the fact – to find out the murderer of Laius-, he insist on discovering the truth. Moreover, he has saved all the people from the riddle of Sphinx with his intellect. Again, he declares the punishment of the murderer and curses upon him. So, in general, he is a good and active man as well as king.

According to Aristotle, a tragic hero has also ‘hamartia’ or ‘tragic flow’ or some defect of character. Actually he is not a sinner but he takes some wrong decisions, and performs some wrong actions. In Oedipus, we see that though he is a possesses good qualities, he has some faults. At first, he is hot-tempered – though king Laius and others had their faults in their confront with him, on account of his very over-exitement, he killed the king. Then, he is hasty in judgement, speedy in taking decision and pervers on it. Though once such quality helped him when he faced Sphinx, later it proves fault of his behaviour. He takes decision that Teiresias and Creon have together made conspiracy against him in order to overthrow him. For this reason, he very bitterly attacks them with insulting words - of whom one is a prophet and another is a giltless man. Then, he is very proud of his Intellect that once rescued the nation. Moreover, more than once, he unknownly curses upon himself, upon the murderer of Laius for whom Thebes is suffering a lot. Here one thing is mentionable that the curse pronounced by a king was to be no stone unturned in the ancient time. So, it has a great importance in this play. Indeed all these proceed to Oedipus’ downfall, but the main sins in the eyes of gods that have been committed by him are murdering his father and marrying his own mother. However, the first one is committed for his over exitement and the other is unwillingly and unknownly.

Aristotle observes that a tragic hero suffers a lot misfortune on account of his ‘hamartia’- however this suffering may be mental or physical or both. In the case of Oedipus, we see that when Oedipus knows that he has killed his father and married his own mother, he reaches to the climax of his mental suffering or his tragedy. He blinds himself, thrusting the brooches of Jocasta into both his eyes, drawing a stream of blood from them. So, we may realize the peak of Oedipus’ suffering that may be an example of highest human suffering. Aristotle mentions that, observing the suffering of a tragic hero, in the mind of a reader or audience, pity for the hero and fear for suffering may be produced- he defines it as catharsis. Here, seeing the suffering of Oedipus, we fall in extreme sadness but feel pity and sympathy for him, because he has committed all the sins unwillingly. The last scene of the play produces much pity for him. Moreover we also fear and pray for not coming this kind of suffering or incidents in our life.

In conclusion, it can be said that Oedipus is an ideal tragic hero in the Greek tragedy. He is the conscious creation of Sophocles. Though he commits some sin, he wins our sympathy, because he is a victim of fate, circumstances and surroundings. His committing sin is not willful. For this reason, whenever he knows about his sin, he curses upon himself, and becomes blind of the sight of his eyes by which seeing his father, he has killed him, and has seen such parts of the body of his mother that should not be seen, and now he does not want to see the good things of the world. Therefore, though he commits sin unwillingly, mentally he is a pure man who is only a prey in the hands of destiny.

Worldly wisdom and pragmatism in Bacon's essays

2014-03-09T16:58:00.000+06:00

There is nothing to dispute that the essays of Bacon are full of worldly wisdom, practical thinking and pragmatic values and therefore they constitute a handbook of practical wisdom. Worldly wisdom refers to the kind of wisdom that is required for achieving worldly success. Bacon is clearly seen in his essays both as a philosopher and a moralist. A philosopher is deeply interested in the pursuit of truth and a moralist is a person who teaches human beings differentiate between the right and the wrong and urges them to undergo the right path only. Bacon is found in this dual role in many of his essays.

The essay ‘Of Great Place’ contains a large number of moral precepts but these moral precepts, it is noted, are synonymous with worldly wisdom. Bacon says that a man attaining a high position loses his freedom. Men in high positions, he observes rightly, are happy only when they hear that other men think well of that and that other men envy them for the offices they hold. Bacon says

“In place there is license to do good and evil; whereof the latter is a curse: for in evil the best condition is not to will; the second, not to can.”

The purpose of a man’s efforts should be to perform noble and meritorious tasks.

Bacon observes that there are four vices of authority that should be avoided – delays, corruption, roughness and facility. A servant or a favourite should not be allowed to get too intimate because others may suspect him an agent through whom one receives bribes. A man in high position should think a number of times before making promises. If he cannot keep the promise he has made, his reputation will go down, and his enemies will get chance to talk against him.

Wisdom in Bacon’s essay, “Of Marriage and Single Life” does not refer to the profound or philosophical variety. Rather it offers worldly wisdom which, to a great extent, is cynical. Bacon’s cynical approach is expressed in the very opening sentence of this essay - Bacon expresses the view that a married man with children can not undertake great efforts: “He that hath wife and children hath given hostage to fortune.” He continues opining that “The best works and / of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men.” However such notion is not certainly true to the general context.

In the essay “Of Parents and Children”, Bacon observes that parents must not have discrimination among their several children. Parents should not be miser in fixing the pocket allowance for their children. If the children receive too shall a pocket allowance, they will associate with mean companions and will learn all kinds of tricks and dishonest practices.

In the essay “Of Studies”, Bacon offers some practical wisdom regarding studies. Studies develop and perfect a man’s natural ability and they are in turn enriched by practical experience. Only bookish knowledge or only practical knowledge cannot help one. One should have both. Studies might give one guideline. But experience and practical knowledge are something that one should apply in one’s life. There are some books which are to be read only few parts. There are some books that should be read quickly. There are only a small number of books that deserve to be read thoroughly and closely. Thus only a small number of books provide the knowledge and wisdom that are to be imbibed and made a permanent part of oneself. Bacon says, “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”

In the essay “Of Love”, Bacon offers a practical analysis of love. He says that a man should stay away from passion of love. A passionate lover is likely to lose not only other things but also love. A man should restrain himself from excessive love and keep it within limits. He should not let his love interfere with his life. Dissolute or immoral love has corrupting and deserting effects upon human beings, though love is essential for the welfare of human.

In the essay “Of Friendship”, Bacon makes a pure worldly approach to friendship. He analyzes the uses of friendship. A friend can give reliable advice and alternative suggestions. It is better to consult the same man in all matters but he should be a wise and sincere friend. A friend can speak or act on our behalf where we ourselves cannot speak or act.

It is true that Bacon is a philosopher and a moralist, but it has rightly been pointed out by critics that, in his essays as in his own career, he treated philosophy and morality as being subordinate to worldly success. It is for this reason that the wisdom of his essays is of a somewhat cynical kind.

This note is written by Md. Intisher Chowdhury Sherbin

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The Rivals: an anti-sentimental comedy, a revival of comedy of manners

2013-12-17T23:59:00.000+06:00

In the Restoration period England witnessed the emergence of ‘comedies of manners’ showing the confused and sanctimonious lifestyles of the rising middle class and upper class then “during the 18^th century, ‘sentimental comedies’ encouraged audiences to uphold virtue and avoid vice, chiefly by stirring their emotions.” Next Goldsmith and Sheridan, in the form of sentimental comedy, attempted a revival of the Restoration comedy of manners without its coarseness and immorality, and satirize sentimental tradition.

In short, we say that “sentimental drama growing out of an assumption of the essential goodness of man, incorporated moral lessons by both precept and example, portrayed easy reformation of wrongdoers, and placed great emphasis on pity and self-sacrifice.”

Sheridan’s ‘The Rivals’ is regarded as an anti-sentimental comedy. Because it is a comedy packed with wit, laughter, and mirth provoking scenes, while the sentimental comedies move the audience to tears not to laughter. Sheridan portrays sentimental characters and situations in such a way that they arouse in the audience funny feelings. Thus he ridicules their sentiments.

At the very first, Sheridan informs us about the sentimental heroine of the play through the dialogue between Coachman and Fag. She is so wealthy that if she wanted she could pay the entire national debt as easily as Fag can pay his washerwoman’s bill. Yet she is so sentimental that she has an ‘odd taste’. She is, Fog says –

“A lady of a very singular taste: a lady who likes him [Beverley] better as a half-pay ensign than if she knew he was son and heir to Sir Anthony Absolute, a baronet of three thousand a year.”

Moreover she does not change her notion to marry, without her anti consent, a low paid man even after knowing the penalty of losing her property. She deliberately makes a quarrel with her lover just for pleasure and making fun, because lovers always quarrel in sentimental novels. She says,

“I wrote a little to myself, to inform myself that Beverly was at that time paying his address to another woman.”

Furthermore, when she discovers that there will be no elopement, she is sullen and quite prepared to break off her engagement. Actually, Sheridan has ridiculed Lydia’s funny, absurd and sentimental notions and activities. Lydia cries out-

“When I thought we were coming to the prettiest distress imaginable… I had projected one of the most sentimental elopements! …. So amiable a ladder of ropes! …… Scotch parson … such paragraphs in newspapers! Oh, I shall die with disappointment!”

There are of course some sentimental and over sentimental scenes in The Rivals, but they are actually parody of sentimentality. If we examine the scenes of Faulkland-Julia, we will understand the writer’s intention to laugh at the sentimental comedy of the time. Absolute describes Faulkland as the “most teasing, captious, incorrigible, lover,” having in his head a “confounded farrago of doubts, fears, hope, wishes.”

When separated from Julia, Faulkland feels excessive solicitude. If it rains, he feels afraid, lest some shower should have chilled her delicate body. He is anxious that the adversity of weather would affect her body.

We notice another absurd sentimentality regarding the mental situation of two lovers separated from each other. Having heard from Acres that Julia is in good position even in absence from him, he becomes angry and thinks that she does not love him really. He says that -

“A little trifling indisposition is not an unnatural consequence of absence from those we love.”

Sentimental drama contains characters who dissect relationships excessively with other people, who have a tendency of self-abnegation, who are concerned with the feelings of others that they suppress their own desires. Sheridan has injected these characteristics in Faulkland in order to ridicule sentimental drama. Faulk land blames and degrades him when thinking of and waiting for Julie in her dressing-room. He thinks,

“I am ever ungenerously fretful and madly capricious! I am conscious of it – yet I can not correct myself!”

But while talking, he tries to find out the root of her love relation to him. He says,

“Search your heart, Julia; perhaps what you have mistaken for love is but the warm effusion of a too thankful heart.”

When she asks what quality she is to love him for, he picks up the word:

“To regard me for any quality of mind or understanding were only to esteem me;”

Nor does he want to accept the idea that it is true love if she loves him for his handsome appearance or for her father’s promise.

Julia also shows an excessive sentimentality in her love affair. Lydia rightly calls her ‘slave’ to Faulk land. She says –

“Yet have you ….. Been a slave to the caprice, the whim, the jealousy of this ungrateful Faulkland who will ever delay assuming the right of a husband, while you suffer him to be equally imperious as a lover.”

But Julia sentimentally describes him as generous, proud and noble, and says that even if she had not been in love with him before, she would have loved her only for saving her life in water and for his being a good swimmer. Here Sheridan attacks her sentimentality through Lydia who surprises if a water-spaniel would have saved her! And who comments –

“I should never think of giving my heart to a man because he could swim!”

Moreover, in stead of Faulkland’s suspecting her love again and again she abjectly surrenders to him and takes the initiative for reconciliation with him. Actually her over sentimental activities do not resemble to those of normal girls.

There are also some other characters who serve Sheridan’s anti-sentimental purpose. Mrs Malaprop, a widow, is looking for another husband. But she does not allow Lydia love. Lydia says –

“Since she has discovered her own frailty, she is become more suspicious of mine.”

Her name has become a word in the language for her “ludicrous misuse of word, especially for one resembling it.” Sir Lucius is insistent on fighting duels. Though he does not want to fight duel for his sentiment, dueling itself is treated in an anti-sentimental way. There is Bob Acress, awkward and good-natured, who has developed “an odd kind of a new method of swearing.” Captain Jack Absolute shows simple common sense. He pretends to be low paid Ensign Beverley to cater Lydia’s weird romantic notion. But he intends to marry her only under all proper auspices. Yet Sheridan shows: when they meet, they both justify the family name.

From the above discussion, we have seen that Sheridan’s The Rivals ridicules and attacks the sentimental comedies. Therefore it is an anti-sentimental comedy, as Allardyce Nicoll says, “in the main, the comedy presents a direct challenge to the sentimentalists.” But he adds that “in the Julia-Faulkland portions, there are evident features of Cumberland style.” (British Drama) Nettleton also comments –

“Like Goldsmith, Sheridan could not at once rid himself wholly of the contagion of the sentimentality which he attacked consciously or not, he allowed the Faulkland under plot to retain, in some measure, the conventional phrasing of sentimental drama.” (English Drama of the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century)

But we can say, if he had retained the convention to sentimental drama, what was his necessity to revolt against it? Actually, he exaggerates the sentimentality of some characters just to mock at the sentimental tradition.

The Glorious Revolution: causes and effects, and why it is called Glorious

2013-12-17T20:30:00.001+06:00

Through the Restoration, Charles II became the king of England, but the power of the king had already been reduced. Then, James II, an avowed Catholic and believer of the Devine Right, like previous Stuart kings, came into throne. Without considering the laws and public sentiment, he performed some arbitrary activities for the sake of reviving Catholicism. But time had changed. Therefore, in 1688, a revolution without bloodshed took place against James II’s activities. This very revolution is known as ‘Glorious Revolution’. It has proved one of the most powerful and effective events or revolutions in the history of England as well as Europe.

At first we can discuss the causes that led the situation to the revolution:

1. The main cause behind the revolution was James II’s attempt to revive Catholicism in England. As he was an avowed Catholic and knew that he would not get any help to fulfill his desire from the Parliament, he took steps by illegal exercise of the royal prerogative. He began a ‘systematic violation’ of the laws of the country and the public opinion. And he committed a series of arbitrary acts that were responsible for the revolution.

2. Violation of the Test Act was the first step by James II to appoint Catholics to civil and military posts, as the act, passed in Charles II’s reign, was supposed to prevent the Catholics to be appointed.

3. Being angry with the refusal of the Parliament to cancel the Test Act, James abolished the parliament and used the ‘Dispending Power’ (power of postponing the law imposed on any one). And thus, he appointed many Catholics in military and royal posts.

4. In 1686, he founded the “Court of Ecclesiastical Commission” like previous ‘High Commission Court’ (cancelled in 1641) in order to punish the people, opposite to his religious doctrine.

5. Meddling in the governance of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, James II began to attack on protestant religion and established church. Sir Isaac Newton, V.C. of Cambridge University, having refused to give an MA degree, without oath, on a Benedictine monk selected by James, the king expelled him. Again by his dispending power, he employed many Catholics in Oxford. In addition, he expelled the fellows of Magdalene College, Oxford, for refusing to select a Roman Catholic to be a president, and employed Catholics in the vacant posts. So this kind of activities of a king hurt the hearts of the people.

6. In the same way, he issued his policy in Scotland. Roman Catholics were given full freedom and granted in the posts of ‘Privy Council’ and important offices.

7. In 1687, James II issued the first ‘Declaration of Indulgence’ suspending the penal laws against both Catholics and Dissenters. But the Dissenters were not satisfied with this. They realized the cunning purpose of the king that he only wanted to use them.

8. Moreover, he issued his second Declaration of Indulgence in 1688 and ordered it to be read in the Churches.

9. But seven bishops led by Archbishop Sancroft did not agree to do it. They petitioned the king to be released from reading the second Declaration of Indulgence. They became very popular with the public sentiment but they were accused of libel and brought to trial. So, it spread excitement in the whole nation.

10. At that very time, the most alarming matter because the giving birth to a new baby boy by the king’s wife in her old age. The people were mentally satisfied with the thought that after his death (as he was old), his protestant daughter would be the next queen very soon. But now it became shuttered. Because, the new baby, son of a Catholic father, must be brought up in a Catholic circumstances, and must be like his father. So the people began to think the alternative to the king.

Finally, all these events prepared the background or field of the Revolution, but the main event happened after the seven bishops had got acquittal. Trevelyan writers –

“The trial of the seven Bishops and their acquittal by a jury brought the excitement in the nation to a head, and that night an invitation signed by seven Whig and Tory chiefs was sent over to Williams of Orange whose agents had been for some time past in close touch with various leaders of opinion in England”.

Next, when William with his soldiers arrived England and marched upon London, on 5^th November, 1688, “James was deserted by the offices of his own regiment as well as by his friends and so fled to France”. Then, William and Mary were declared to be the king and Queen. In this the way how the Revolution happened.

The revolution has various sided effects on politics, government and religion of England as well as Europe. Now we can discuss the results of the revolution:

It marked the end of long struggle between the king and Parliament. Through the Stuart reign, it was the matter of dispute that who the supreme power is, whether the king or the Parliament.

It reduced the power of the king and established the supremacy of the Parliament. Earlier, the king summoned and cancelled or abolished the Parliament according to his own desire and need. But now the Parliament gained the power of selecting the king. So, it destroyed the Stuart doctrine of the Devine Right.

“In short, the Revolution closed the era of monarchial despotism and introduced the era of constitutionalism.”

In religious aspect, there occurred the triumph of Protestantism in England and later the freedom of religion.

It secured a great effect on European politics. Under Charles II and his brother, England became almost back and call of France. But under William, she became the enemy of France but the great power in Europe as well as in the world. Later, it put its influence on French Revolution as well.

There was an effect on the relation among England, Scotland and Ireland. Supporting the revolution, Scotland became a prosperous country. On the contrary, opposing the revolution, Ireland had to remain under England for a long time.

‘A Declaration of Rights’ condemned the arbitrary acts of James II and proclaimed the conditional principles of the government.

It was the last revolution in the history of England.

Sometimes a question is raised “why is it called glorious?” or “Is the revolution of 1688 a revolution at all?” On this context, historian Trevelyan writes –

“The true ‘glory’ of the British Revolution lay in the fact that it was blood less, that there was no civil war, no massacre, no proscription, and above all that a settlement by consent was reached of the religious and political differences that had so long and so fiercely divided men and parties. The settlement of 1689 stood the last of time. It led not only to a new and wider liberty than had ever before been known in Britain, but to a renewed vigiour and efficiency in the bloody politics and in the government of the Empire.”

Therefore, from the above discussion, it has been clear that the Glorious Revolutions is very important in the history from various aspects like religion, politics, constitution of government, and also foreign policy of England. And it is actually a matter of glory for England.

Satire and Irony in Don Juan / Treatment of man and woman in Don Juan

2013-12-16T23:36:00.000+06:00

George Gordon Lord Byron (1795-1821), in spite of his being a romantic poet, was very much different from other romantic poets in respect of the characteristics of his poetry. Most of them had escaped from the social concerns, i.e. from objectivity into the world of nature and of imagination as well as into subjectivity. But, in Byron, we see an important combination of subjectivity and objectivity, i.e. of personal and social. Unlike others, he was very much satirical to the social faults. From this tendency, Byron wrote his famous ‘mock-epic’, Don Juan, exposing and satirizing hypocrisy and the corruption of high class society, criticizing the poetic tendency of the time. However, to make it effective
he used wit humor, irony, exaggeration etc.

The Narrator of Don Juan

At the very first, a question should be resolved. Are the narrator and Byron same person?” – No. Rather, Byron makes his narrator to be conservative and sometimes unreliable and extra sympathetic to the male and a representative of that society. The conservative narrator suggests Juan’s parents that they would have whipped him “to teach him manners for the time to come.” As unreliable, at the very first tells that he will not digress as a narrator, but later he again and again talks of himself, his liking disliking etc.

Heroism in Don Juan

At the opening of the poem, Byron satirizes the traditional epic heroes and heroism; then suggests his own hero; at last reconstructs the heroes. He does not want a traditional hero of strong personality, working for common interests. But he says – “I want a hero, an uncommon want” who later proves a ‘mischief-making monkey’ and busy with his personal and illegal love-affair. Actually, his purpose is to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of the high class society through his hero. Moreover, Juan’s heroism is shown at the scene of ‘duet between Alfonso and Juan where Juan flies away leaving his only garment. Is it an act of any epic hero? In addition he is compared with Joseph in order to underestimate him.

Treatment of man and woman

The narrator mentions Seville, Juan’s birth-place, as a pleasant city, ‘famous for oranges and women.’ Here, purchasable oranges are compared to unpurchasable women. So, what is the effect? The effect, it suggests, is that women would play a vital role in the poem as available as oranges.

We should make it clear how Byron has treated men and women, especially women in his poem. Actually we will see the male characters, Don Juan, Don Jose and Don Alfonso are passive in the poem – Don in all the three names means Lord, suggestive of their upper class derivation. On the other hand, the female characters, Donna Inez, Donna Julia and Antonia, Julia’s maid servant – also here Donna, i.e. Lady, suggesting their upper class births – all are very active over the male. So the narrator’s purpose is to impose all the responsibility of the story upon the shoulders of the female. But, Byron’s main purpose is double gain – first, to show them as the prey of society, that is, to satirize the society; and second, to give ironical hint to them.

Satire in Don Juan

There is a satire with explicit irony on Juan’s education governed by his mother – as his father died earlier. He is taught at home by special tutors with selected and expurgated texts directed and censored by his mother, so that he becomes “strictly moral”; and sexuality keeps out of his reach and knowledge. But the irony is, though Juan remains permanently boyish and innocent in sexuality, his latter life is dominated by sexual love, by proving his all education fruitless. So, what is the reason?

The reason is the circumstances and fault of education in contemporary upper class society. The more he is hid from sexuality which is an inherit thing, the more he becomes curious and later turns vicious; because curiosity is very dangerous. Another critical reason becomes clear in stanza 52 where the narrator is very ironical towards Inez, a female guardian, and here he suggests, if he had a boy, he would have sent him to college. So the indication is that under a single parent of an unhappy couple, especially under a mother, the education of a child can not be fruitful.

Byron satirizes the education and marriage of the female through Donna Inez; by using a term, exaggeration. Byron exaggerates Inez by portraying her as “a learned lady, famed for every science known in every Christian language ever named,” her memory as ‘mine’. Is it believable for a woman at that time? This exaggeration reaches anti-climax when the narrator says –

“In short in all things she was fairly what I call

A prodigy. Her morning dress was dimity.”

Here mentioning both discussions of serious intellectuality and insignificant dress together creates humor. That is, Inez’s education was an irony for the contemporary society. Irony towards Inez becomes satire to the whole society when the narrator says –

“Tis pity learned virgins ever wed

With persons of no sort of education,

Or gentlemen, who, though well-born and bred,

Grow tired of scientific conversation.”

But the questions lies elsewhere – were the women at the time free to learn all and to choose their life partner? So this is the satire by Byron.

Byron’s satire is on another marriage- marriage between Julia, an extra-ordinarily beautiful lady of 23, and Alfonso, almost an old man of 50. Byron describes the marriage and comments on it –

Wedded she was some years and to a man of fifty,

And such husbands are in plenty.

And yet I think instead of such a one

‘Twere better to have two of five and twenty.

This sort of odd marriage containing age distinction is in plenty in the patriarchal society. Because being older the man can easily make the woman rely upon him and prey to him. But after a ‘cold relationship’ between them what is the result? The result is the lady’s extramarital relationship with other people. But if the husband and wife were of same age, this kind of scandal would not happen. So, is Julia as well as the ladies of that society guilty?

Eventually there grows an extramarital physical relationship between Juan and Julia. But, Byron is very much critical and ironical towards Julia.

“That Donna Julia knew the reason why,

But as for Juan, he had no more notion

Than he who never saw the sea of ocean.”

That is, the narrator wants to say that having already been married and being older than Juan, Julia knows all about their passion and attraction to each other. On contrary, this kind of experience is totally unknown to Juan. So all the responsibility of this illicit relationship is for the woman, Julia – to speak clearly all the malpractice happens for the women in the society.

Byron satirizes the society’s double-standard of punishment for the illegitimate relationship. Juan is sent to the European countries for moral purpose. But actually he is rewarded to travel. On the other hand, Julia is sent into a nunnery. But actually she is punished by sending into prison. So, the society’s treatment of male and female is clear here.

At last, the narrator very simply expresses a letter sent by Julia from nunnery to Juan. But this letter establishes Julia to be a different sort of character who casts our sympathy, as happens for the case of the Duchess in “My Last Duchess”. She writes to Juan –

“They tell me ‘tis decided; you depart.

‘Tis wise, ‘tis well, but not the less a pain.

I have no further claim on your young heart;

Mine was victim and would be again.

My eyeballs burn and throb, but have no tears”

That is, Julia is the victim of the society and again will be; ‘but have no tears’ suggests that she is able to bear her punishment – though she neither accepts nor protests the punishment. Moreover after having lost all of her, she does not regret for what misfortunes she has faced. So, all of this shows her quality of a tragic character – though the narrator treats her negatively – while Juan as a passive character.

Byron uses Don Juan, his hero, as a medium to satirize contemporary poetic trend, especially Wordsworth and Coleridge. Juan goes to nature aloof from society in order to pacify his mental agony with the help of the ‘healing power’ of nature; and becomes almost a metaphysician; but all in vain. Suddenly Julia’s picture appears before his eyes and ends his thinking. (st. 90, 91, 92) Moreover Byron says –

Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, and Pope

Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge Southey”

Because the neo – classical poets have social concerns while the romantic poets escape from social problems.

Byron also attacks on the hypocrisy of the characters – Though Donna Inez teaches her son, Juan, strict morality, she does allow him to mix closely with Julia, wife of Alfonso with a view to taking a revenge on Alfonso, her earlier lover. Donna Julia, though she promises “I will never content” to Juan, at last she surrenders to Juan as an active partner of sexual relationship. Even, at her bedroom she violently pretends to be a chaste woman, when Juan is on the bed.

Byron’s satire is also directed against the emptiness and carelessness of the male members of the society. Don Jose is very careless to his wife and goes where his mind leads, and is a man “with no great love for learning or the learned.” Alfonso is another man who one night entered his wife’s bedroom “with more that half the city at his back” in order to discover her illicit relationship with someone.

Byron also satirizes some social currents. Though Don Jose and Donna Inez lead “an unhappy sort of life”, they give “no outward sings of inward strife.” It is a tendency of the upper class. Then, the hearers of the story of Jose and Inez repeat to others, “some for amusement others for grudges”. Next, the narrator refers the case of Jose and Inez as a ‘scandal monger’ in order to improve their relationship!

In fine, from the light of the above discussion, it has been clear that Byron satirizes the problem of upper class society. Because of the death of Juan’s father and age-distinct marriage of Julia, the story is led to extramarital relationship between Juan and Julia, between the hero and the heroine. So the main theme of the epic is extramarital relationship. Additionally, his treatment of men and women is of course mentionable. Next, he creates a Byronic hero who defers from other epic heroes; he chooses him from the Spanish legend. So under this cover, Byron becomes able to severely satirize the English society. Moreover, Wordsworth, Coleridge and other romantic poets have no responsibility for society rather than they escape from the society.

Critical analysis of The Definition of Love : Metaphysical elements in The Definition of Love

2013-12-12T14:59:00.001+06:00

‘The Definition of Love’ is perhaps the most truly metaphysical poem of Marvell having some similarity with Donne in using metaphysical conceit and theme.

At the very opening of the poem, the speaker expresses the characteristics and origin of his love. His love has a strange and high object and “was begotten by despair upon impossibility”, that is, his supreme or divine love is born of the union of despair and impossibility of physical union. Only determined Despair can show him such a spiritual love while hope has no contribution to his love. Yet he might arrive at his destination, his extended soul. But ‘Fate’ always prevents him from being united like a carpenter drives iron wedges into a log of wood in order to split it into two parts. Her ‘Decrees of Steel’ have placed them as the ‘distant Poles’ thus fate is their ‘Tyrannick’ enemy.

Then the speaker, as in ‘To His Coy Mistress’, tells that their union would be possible if three impossible conditions are fulfilled – first if the ‘Giddy Heaven fall’, if a ‘new Convulsion’ destroy the early and if the world turns into a ‘Planisphere’.

‘But’, as in the case of ‘To His Coy Mistress’, their union is not possible, because their motion is ‘parallel’ not ‘oblique’ and there is no possibility of union, though these are infinite.

‘Therefore’ the conclusion is that though love serves as a bond between them, it will not be fulfilled, because ‘Fate with jealous Eye does see’ at them. Their situation is ‘Conjunction of the mind’ but ‘Opposition of the Stars’. That is, they are spiritually united but physically separated.

Now, if we compare the poem with ‘To His Coy Mistress’ we notice some similarities and some dissimilarities at the same time. From thematic aspect, it is opposite to the previous one. Because the former urges the beloved to be physically united. But the latter affirms that their physical union is totally impossible.

Like the previous one, fate has an inevitable role in this poem. She does not allow ‘two perfects loves’ to be united, because their union would ruin her tyrannical power.

The poem, being an excellent Metaphysical poem, draws a number of images and Metaphysical conceits. They are drowned from different sources of knowledge, and provide the display of knowledge. A first, their love is ‘begotten by Despair upon impossibility.’ Here the abstract idea is expressed like a concrete thing. The three conditions are excellent example of this kind of conceit. Comparing their position, to the parallel lines actually draws our attention and displays knowledge.

Thus we see that ‘To His Coy Mistress’ is very much passionate in tone but The Definition of Love is totally pessimistic.

John Donne’s Treatment of Love

Metaphysical Poetry: Definition, Characteristics and John Donne as a Metaphysical Poet

Critical analysis of To His Coy Mistress : To His Coy Mistress as a metaphysical poem

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Donne's way of argument for his pure love with metaphysical conceits

Critical analysis of To His Coy Mistress : To His Coy Mistress as a metaphysical poem

2013-12-11T21:21:00.000+06:00

‘To His Coy Mistress’ is one of the two best love poems of Andrew Marvell, a Metaphysical poet. The poem is written in the form of the style of construction of a poem named ‘syllogism’ including three sections beginning with ‘if’, ‘but’ and ‘therefore’. In this poem, the speaker raises arguments with his beloved to be soft towards him and to relax her firm attitude of puritan reluctance to grant him sexual favors. Thus the theme of the poem is ‘carpe diem’, meaning ‘seize the opportunity’, the full Latin sentence of which is “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula poster”, that is, “Enjoy the present day, trusting the least possible to the future.”

Marvell, being a metaphysical poet, has applied in the poem a number of metaphysical conceits and mighty imagery. However, there is also a touch of wit and irony. Moreover the poem draws a high concentration from the reader and there is an epigrammatic quality. Now, let us analyze the poem in detail.

The poet begins the first section of the poem with an improbable, impossible condition,

“Had we but world enough, and time

This coyness lady were no crime”

That is, if they had enough space and time, the ‘coyness’ or sexual reluctance of his beloved would have no fault with him. Next he says that if they had enough space and time they would have enough time to ‘sit down’ ‘to walk’ and to pass their ‘long loves day’, the lady could find Rubies by the side of ‘Indian Ganges’ while the poet would complain of his unfulfilled love on the banks of the river ‘Humber’ in England; he would begin his love making ten years before the ancient ‘Flood’ occurring probably in the year 2354 B.C, and the refusal of the lady could be granted/endured ‘till the Conversion of the Jews’ when all the Jews would be converted into Christianity. That is the speaker / the lover could wait for a long time for the beloved till she would turn to him.

If they had enough time, he would spend ‘an hundred years’ to praise her eyes and to graze on her forehead; two hundred years to admire each of her breasts; and thirty thousand years to praise the remaining parts of her body. Actually, she, the lover says, deserves such praise and adoration.

But, the speaker says, all of the previous conditions are impossible because of the time’s very first pace. He says,

“At my back I always hear

Times winged chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lye

Deserts of vast Eternity”

He further says that her beauty will decay soon; she, will lie in her tomb; and his “echoing, Song’ will not be heard any more. Even “worms shall try that long preserved Virginity”; her nice sense of honor will ‘turn to dust’ while his lust to make love will turn to ashes. Indeed none wants to embrace the Grave’s ‘fine and private place.’

‘Now therefore’, the speaker draws conclusion, it is the time for them to enjoy the full pleasures of love, when there is still time, when every part of her body ‘transpires’ ‘instant Fires’. The speaker invites the beloved to ‘sport’ ‘like am’rous birds of prey; - to extract the fullest intensity of sexual enjoyment – rather than to ‘Languish in his [times] slow- chapt power’.

In this way, though they can not make the passage of time, stand still, they can at least, fasten its speed by enjoying as much of pleasure as possible.

If we consider the above discussion- we notice that the poet presents the poem in such a well–organized way that any lady can hardly deny his sexual proposal. The first section provides a condition and how the speaker would do ‘if’ the condition is fulfilled. ‘But’ the second section clearly expresses the reality opposing the first condition ‘Therefore’, the speaker, in the last section, eagerly seeks for an alternative to the impossible condition.

Another important thing for the poem is its secular theme, carpe diem as we mentioned earlier. The invitation of the speaker to the beloved ‘to sport’ ‘like am’rous birds of prey’ is no doubt a direct sexual implication having secular influence.

The role of time and fate in our life also takes a place in this poem ‘Times winged chariot hurrying near’ portrays time’s spades continuousness while “Worms shall try that long preserved Virginity” exposes the naked inevitableness in out life with an attack to the rigid ness of Puritanism and with a touch of sexual implication.

Striking imagery and metaphysical conceits are a common characteristic of Marvell as well as Metaphysical poetry. The beloved’s staying by the ‘Indian Ganges’ and the speaker’s by ‘Humber’ draw in our mind a vivid picture. He calls his slowly growing love to be ‘vegetable love’ and the speedy time to be ‘winged chariot hurrying near’. Here abstract ideas, as example of metaphysical conceit, are expressed through concrete images.

The poem is also marked by wit and irony. The speaker mocks at the ‘coyness’ of his beloved because she is in a position to refuse his love till the conversion of Jews into Christianity.

Many of the lines of the poem have an epigrammatic quality which requires a lot of concentration and explanation. One of such examples is –

The grave’s a fine and private place

But none I think do there embrace

Indeed, most of the aspects discussed here are the elements of metaphysical poetry. Therefore, the poem is an excellent example of this kind.

You may also like:

John Donne’s Treatment of Love

Metaphysical Poetry: Definition, Characteristics and John Donne as a Metaphysical Poet

Criticalanalysis of The Definition of Love : Metaphysical elements in The Definition ofLove

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning: Donne's way of argument for his pure love with metaphysical conceits

Bacon’s essays : dispersed meditations

2013-12-11T14:49:00.000+06:00

Bacon’s essays are written on abstract, meditative and thoughtful subjects. In these essays he jostles down his experience of human nature, human mind as well as human life. But the ideas of a particular essay are not logically connected to one another. For this reason his essays are often identified as full of ‘dispersed meditations’.

Bacon describes his essays as ‘dispersed meditations and also as brief notes set down rather significantly than curiously’. Here the word ‘curiosity’ has been used in the sense of ‘elaborately’.

Bacon’s essays are dispersed meditations in two senses.

First, the ideas of a particular essay are not developed systematically: it seems that having got any idea in his mind from his observation on any 'text' or context, he quickly notes it down briefly.

Second, the sentences are not logically connected to one another: there is hardly any structural unity and cohesive devices which are very essential among sentences for a well organized paragraph. There is no detailed discussion of the subjects- the sentences are often read like maxims having brevity and condensation of thought, even conjunctions and other logical connections are sometimes left out. Thus the essays are not ‘well-knitted’ compositions.

Of course there is no digression from the central subject of the essays. However, the examples of Bacon’s dispersed meditations are found especially in his earlier essays.

‘Of Studies’ is a most suitable example of those essays that are dispersed meditations and contain a string of aphorisms and maxims. Bacon starts the essay with ‘studies serve for delight, for ornament and for ability’ and gives a little explanation in the next sentence. After that, just after discussing the functions of ‘expert men’ and ‘learned’ men, he, without using any sentence connector, shifts to another idea in the following sentence –

“To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affection; to make judgment wholly by their rules is humor of a scholar.’’

Just after saying, in the next sentence, of our natural abilities, of studies and of experiences, he says an aphoristic sentence-

“Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them:……..’’

Indeed, there is no explicit relation between these two sentences.

In the next three sentences he talks of why to read, what books to read and how to read; and says that summarized books are insipid, tasteless, and give no pleasure- ‘else distilled books are like common distilled water, flashy things’. But there is no logical connection among these sentences. Rather, he writes of another idea- function of reading, conversation and in the next sentence- “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.’ So, these sentences lack structural unity and development of ideas.

However we meet a sentence linker in the next sentence that explains the precious maxim like sentence- he begins the sentence with,

‘And therefore………………………’

But again he provides us an example of dispersed meditation in the very next sentence expressing functions of different sorts of subjects –

“Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logical and rhetoric able to contend.”

In the essay ‘Of Truth’, we get some ideas, regarding truth, just jumbled together, but they do not develop from one another as should be in a logically developed essay.

Here Bacon expresses that the standard of truth in religions, philosophical and moral spheres changes from time to time; discusses different sorts of men’s love for lie; compares truth and lie from human observation, grants the high value of truth and elaborates the idea by referring to Gods gifts of reason to man. He ends the essay with a warring that the wickedness of falsehood and breach of faith will be duly punished on Judgment Day. We can mention just one of the examples of dispersed meditation in statement- Bacon begins the essay with a question –

‘What is Truth? Said jestling Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.’

Furthermore, he abruptly begins the next sentence not showing any logical relation between the two-

“Certainly there be that delight in giddiness and count it a bondage to fix a belief;”

The essay ‘of Marriage and Single Life’ provides us a number of ideas regarding advantages, disadvantages, and features of both married life and single life. Of course, all the ideas are centred to the topic. But they do not come one after another in a systematic order but in haphazard order. For example, Bacon says –

“It is one of the best bonds both of chastity and obedience in the wife, if she thinks her husband wise; which she will never do if she finds him jealous.”

Then he says –

“Wives are young men’s mistress;

Companions for middle age;

And old men’s nurses”

In the first sentence Bacon speaks of the wifes obedience and faith in the husband, while, in the second sentence he distinguishes the relation between the husband and the wife’s in different ages. Hence the second one does not develop from the first one, except from the central topic.

“To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affection; to make judgment wholly by their rules is humour of a scholar.’’

Just after saying, in the next sentence, of our natural abilities, of studies and of experiences, he says an aphoristic sentence-

“Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them:……..’’

There is no explicit relation between the two sentences.

In the next three sentences he talks of why to read, what books to read and how to read ; and says that summarized books are insipid, tasteless, and give no pleasure-

‘else distilled books are like common distilled water, flashy things’

But there is no logical connection among these sentences. Rather, he writes another idea function of reading, conversation and in the next sentence-

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.’

So, these sentences lack structural unity and development of ideas.

However we meet a sentence linker in the next sentence that explains the precious maxim like sentence- he begins the sentence with,

‘And therefore………………………’

But again he provides us an example of dispersed meditation in the very next sentence expressing functions of different sorts of subjects –

“Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logical and rhetoric able to contend.”

In the essay ‘of Truth’ we get some ideas, regarding truth, just jumbled together, but they do not grow from one another as should be in a logically developed essay.

We should mention just one of the examples of dispersed meditation in statement-

Bacon begins the essay with –

‘what is Truth? Said jestling Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.’

But abruptly begins the next sentence not showing any logical relation between the two-

Certainly there be that delight in giddiness and count it a bondage to fix a

belief;’

The essay ‘of Marriage and Single life’ provides us a number of ideas regarding advantages, disadvantages, and features of both married life and single life. Of course, all the ideas are centred to the topic. But they do not come one after another in systematic order but in haphazard order.

For example, Bacon says –

“It is one of the best bonds both of chastity and obedience in the wife, if she thinks her husband wise; which she will never do if she finds him jealous.”

Then he says –

“Wives are young men’s mistress;

Companions for middle age;

And old men’s nurses”

In the first sentence Bacon speaks of the wife's obedience and faith in the husband, while, in the second sentence he distinguishes the relation between the husband and the wife’s in different ages. Hence the second one does not grow from the first one, except from the central topic.

Syllabus, Department of English, Dhaka University

2013-12-11T13:25:00.003+06:00

Dhaka University

Syllabus: B.A. Honours in English

From Session: 2006-2007

First Year

Semester I

Course No.	Course Title
Eng. 101	Developing English Language Skills
Eng. 102	Introduction to Literature (Critical Appreciation)
Eng. 103	Introduction to Poetry

Semester II

Course No.	Course Title
Eng. 104	Advanced Composition
Eng. 105	Introduction to Prose and Drama
Eng. 106 (A) Or	Introduction to Bangla Literature
Eng. 106 (B)	Bangladesh Studies

Second Year

Semester I

Course No.	Course Title
Eng. 201	Introduction to Linguistics
Eng. 202	Romantic Poetry
Eng. 203	English Novel from Defoe to Hardy

Semester II

Course No.	Course Title
Eng. 204	Academic Writing
Eng. 205	English Drama from Marlowe to Congreve
Eng. 206	Victorian Poetry and Prose

Third Year

Semester I

Course No.	Course Title
Eng. 301	Introduction to English Language Teaching
Eng. 302	Poetry from Spenser to Pope
Eng. 303	History of England

Semester II

Course No.	Course Title
Eng. 304	English for Professional Purpose
Eng. 305	English Prose from Bacon to Burke
Eng. 306	History of Western Ideas

Fourth Year

Semester I

Course No.	Course Title
Eng. 401	Teaching Second Language Skills
Eng. 402	20^th Century literature (Poetry and Drama)
Eng. 403	Classics in Translation
Eng. 404 (A) Or	Language and Society
Eng. 404 (B)	American Literature

Semester II

Course No.	Course Title
Eng. 405	20^th Century Fiction
Eng. 406	Critical Theory
Eng. 407	Shakespeare
Eng. 408 (A) Or	Language Through Literature
Eng. 408 (B) Or	Structure of English
Eng. 408 (C)	Language and Media

First Year: Semester I

Course Eng. 101: Developing English Language Skills

Listening:

listening for main ideas/ key information
listening for specific details
listening and understanding both implicit and explicit messages
Listening and responding to texts (i.e., following instructions, answering questions, reacting to texts, etc.)
Listening and note-taking

Speaking:

Understanding social conventions (i.e., formal/ informal speech, turn taking etc.)
Guided conversations (involving different functions and situations, e.g., greetings, requesting, apologizing etc.)
Two-minute impromptu talks
Reading news item and reporting
Role-plays and simulations
Preparing and presenting talks on a given theme
Interviews
Story telling
Informal debates and group discussions
Public speaking

Reading:

Reading strategies (skimming, scanning, predicting, inferencing, etc.)
speed reading
active reading (highlighting, getting information from text quickly finding your way around texts noting key words, following main arguments, interacting with the text and summarizing)
reading to improve linguistic skills and expand vocabulary, understanding overall discourse to relate structure and meaning to the analysis and comprehension of the text
critical reading (make judgments about how a text is argued, reflecting and making personal response as well as close scrutiny of language to understand writer’s attitude ad perspective)
extensive reading (reading outside class books selected by teachers; at least two books will be read)
Reading journal articles and literary criticisms.
Writing books reviews (reviews of the books read during the course)

Writings:

Developing sentence structures to build language awareness:

a. Extending basic sentence construction with vocabulary

b. Use of word combinations and collocations

c. Use of complex sentence constructions with connectives also fragments, run-ons

Paraphrasing
Summarizing
Organizing a paragraph: topic sentence, detailed sentences, logical order and conclusions
Paragraph writing focusing on the characteristics of pattering, cohesion, coherence and unity in the paragraph, paragraph analysis, development, outlining
Writing paragraph following different modes of writing: definition, description, classification, cause and effect, comparison and contrast

Course Eng. 102: Introduction to Literature (Critical Appreciation)

Reading

Using different genres to introduce figurative language (image, simile, metaphors, connotation, denotation, personification, allusion, symbol, hyperbole, irony, paradox, oxymoron and apostrophe)
Understanding sound patterns (alliteration, consonance, assonance, internal, end rhyme, blank verse, free verse, free verse, heroic couplet, rhythm) and scansion.
Understanding aspects of style and structure (mood, tone, setting, character and theme)
Understanding overall discourse to relate structure and meaning to the analysis and comprehension of the text.
Reading critically to make judgements about how a text is argued and to make personal responses as well as close scrutiny of language to understand writer’s attitude, and perspective and point of view (speaker, narrator)

Course Eng. 103: Introduction to Poetry

Shakespeare : “shall I Compare Thee to a summer’s Day”; “My Mistress’s Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun”

Herrick : “Delight in Disorder”; “Upon Julia’s Clothes”

Donne : “The Sun Rising”; “Batter my heart”

Gray : “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

Keats : “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”

E.B. Browning : Sonnets from the Portuguese, No. 43

Eliot : “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Dylan Thomas : “Fern Hill”

Ted Hughes : “Pike”; “Jaguar”

Adrienne Rich : “Living in Sin”; “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers”

Archibald Macleish : “Ars Poetica”

Seamus Heaney : “Digging”

First Year: Semester II

Course Eng. 104: Advanced Composition

The course will comprise the following:

Prewriting strategies: free-writing, brainstorming, mind mapping/ clustering, narrowing the focus etc.
Writing with purpose and for specific audience
Writing effective thesis statements
Organizing/ structuring the essay: outlining, writing appropriate introductions, supporting details and conclusions
Writing the firsts draft
Revising and editing
Writing the final draft
Writing different types of essays: narrative/ descriptive, exploratory, argumentative
Writing biographies
Writing response papers
Mechanics of writing: grammar, punctuation and spelling

Course Eng. 105: Introduction to Prose and Drama

Prose:

Bacon : “Of Studies”

Lamb : “Witches and Other Night Fears”

Newman : From “The Idea of a New University”

Woolf : “Women and Fiction”

Mansfield : “The Garden Party”

Orwell : “Shooting an Elephant”

O’Connor : “My Oedipus Complex”

Desai : “Games at Twilight”

Drama:

Oedipus

Merchant of Venice

Arms and the Man

Course Eng. 106 (A): Introduction to Bangla Literature

------------------
------------------

Course Eng. 106 (B): Bangladesh Studies

(For foreign students and those who have not studied Bangla at any level)

Introduction to Bangla Language, History and Culture

History of Bangladesh since 1905

Ethnology and Culture

Literary Heritage

Second Year: Semester I

Course Eng. 201: Introduction to Linguistics

Definition and characteristics of language
Origins of language
Subfields/branches of linguistics: phonetics and phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics

Course Eng. 202: Romantic Poetry

Blake : Songs of Innocence and Experience

Wordsworth : “Tintern Abbey”; “Michael”;

“Ode on Intimations of Immortality”;

“The Prelude” Book 1

Coleridge : “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; “Kubla Khan”;

“Dejection: An Ode”

Byron : Don Juan 1

Shelley : “Ode to a Skylark”; “Adonais”

Keats : “Odes”

Course Eng. 203: English Novel from Defoe to Hardy

Defoe : Robinson Crusoe

Austen : Pride and Prejudice

Charlotte Bronte : Jane Eyre

Charles Dickens : Oliver Twist

Hardy : Tess of the D’ Urbervilles

Second Year: Semester II

Course Eng. 204: Academic Writing

The various components of the course will include:

Reading to write: reading critical essays, obtaining information and note-taking
Synthesizing diverse information and making commections
Thinking critically and analytically on a given theme/issue
Organizing and prioritizing the information into a thematic pattern
Arguing with convincing evidence
Setting the tome of formal writing
Diction/word choice in academic writing
Transitions and cohesion
Acknowledging source and incorporating direct and indirect quotes
Writing literary essays on character, theme, style plot structure, imagery, symbolism, etc.
Understanding examination questions and key terms in questions

Course Eng. 205: English Drama from Marlowe to Congreve

Marlowe : Dr. Faustus

Shakespeare : Macbeth

Jonson : Volpone

Webster : The Duchess of Malfi

Congreve : The Way of the World

Course Eng. 206: Victorian Poetry and Prose

Poetry:

Tennyson : “Lotos Eaters”; “Ulysses”; “Tithonus”; “Locksley Hall”

Browning : “Porphyria’s Lover”; “Fra Lippo Lippi”; “Andrea del Sarto”;

“My Last Duchess”; “Rabbi Ben Ezra”;

Arnold : “The Scholar Gipsy”; “Dover Beach”; “Thyrsis”

Prose

Mill : Selections from On Liberty and Autobiography (as in Norton)

Walter Pater : (As in Norton)

Third Year: Semester I

Course Eng. 301: Introduction to English Language Teaching

Brief history of English language teaching
The Grammar-Translation Method
The Direct Method
The Audio-Lingual Method
The Natural approach
Alternative Approaches and Methods: Silent Way, Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning
Communicative Language Teaching
Learner-centred Approaches
Issues in ELT Methodology: Classroom interaction, authenticity, fluency, accuracy, accuracy and appropriacy, usage of L1 and L2, error correction

Course Eng. 302: Poetry from Spenser to Pope

Spenser : The Faerie Queene Book 1, Canto 1

Donne : “Good Morrow”; “Canonization”;

“Song: Sweetest Love I do not goe……”;

“Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”;

“Nocturnal upon St. Lucie’s Day”;

“The Relic”; “The Extasie”; “The Flea”; “Batter My Heart”;

“Thou Hast Made Me”;

Herbert : “The Altar”; “Easter Wings”; “Collar”

Milton : Paradise Lost Book IX

Marvell : “To His Coy Mistress”; “Bermudas”; “The Definition of Love”

Pope : The Rape of the Lock

Course Eng. 303: History of English

The Tudors and the Stuarts – Renaissance and Reformation England

The Civil War

The Restoration of 1660

The Glorious Revolution of 1688

The Rise of Political Parties

Industrial Revolution

The English Empire

Victorian England

The First World War in England

Third Year: Semester II

Course Eng. 304: English for Professional Purpose

Business Reports
Business Letters
Job Applications
Internal Memoranda
Minutes
Editing
Developing Press Copies
Oral Presentation

Course Eng. 305: English Prose from Bacon to Burke

Bacon : Essays: “Of Truth”; “Of Marriage and Single Life”;

“Of Great Place”; “Of Plantations”; “Of Studies”;

“Of Friendship”

Milton : Areopagitica (as in Norton)

Swift : Gulliver’s Travels

Addison : “Sir Roger at Church”; “Sir Roger at the Assizes”;

“The Aims of the Spectator”; “Wit: True, False, Mixed”

Samuel Johnson : “Life of Cowley”

E. Burke : “Speech on the East India Bill”

Course Eng. 306: History of Western Ideas

The Greeks and the Romans: the Pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Epicureans, Cynics, Skeptics.

The Medieval World War

The Renaissance: Eramus, More, Machiavelli, Bacon.

The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

The Rise of Modern Science: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton.

The Rise of Modern Philosophy: Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke.

The Enlightenment and 18^th Century Thought: The Philosophes,

Berkeley, Hume, Burke, Adam Smith, Malthus, Rousseau, Kant.

Romanticism and the French Revolution.

Mary Wollstonecraft and the birth of Feminism

The American War of Independence and Democracy

19^th Century Thought: Hegel, Marx and Socialism, Utilitarianism, Darwin and the Theory of Evolution, Positivism (Comte), Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Feminism.

20^th Century Thought: Bergson and Creative Evolution, Pragmatism, Modern Analytical Philosophy and the Scientific World-View, Modern Psychology (Freud, Jung and Psychoanalysis, Behaviourism, Gestalt Psychology), Existentialism, Feminism.

Fourth Year: Semester I

Course Eng. 401: Teaching Second Language Skills

Teaching the receptive and productive skills: theory and classroom application
Integration of the four skills
Teaching Grammar
Teaching Vocabulary
Teaching Pronunciation

Course Eng. 402: 20^th Century Literature (Poetry and Drama)

Poetry:

Yeats : “The Lake Isle of Innsfree”;

“The Man Who Dream of Faerie Land”; “Easter 1916”;

“Second Coming”; “Sailing to Byzantium”;

“The Wild Swans at Crole”; “Leda and the Swan”;

“Among School Children”; “Byzantium”;

“Circus Animal’s Desertion”; “A Prayer for My Daughter”

Eliot : The Waste Land

Auden : “Musee de Beaux Arts”; “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”;

“Shield of Achillies”; “In Praise of Limestone”

Larkin : “Church Going”; “MCMXIV”; “Aubade”; “Mr. Bleaney”;

“The Building”; “Ambulances”; “The Whitsun Weddings”

Drama:

Osborn : Look Back in Anger

Beckett : Waiting for Godot

Pinter : The Birthday Party

Course Eng. 403: Classics in Translation

Homer : The Iliad

Virgil : The Aeneid

Aeschylus : Agamemnon

Sophocles : Electra

Euripides : Alcestis

Aristophanes : Lysistrata

Anonymous : Beowulf

Course Eng. 404 (A): Language and Society

Language and Dialect: Regional and Social Dialects, Variation Studies, Standard Language
Register
Diglossia
Code-switching
Borrowing
Pidgins
Creoles
Theories of the origins of pidgins and Creoles
World Englishes, Language and Culture

Course Eng. 404 (B): American Literature

Emerson : “The American Scholar”

Hawthorne : “Young Goodman Brown”

H. Melville : “Bartleby”

Thoreau : “Economy” (from Walden)

Walt Whitman : “When Lilacs Last…..”

Emily Dickinson : Selections

Henry James : Daisy Miller: A Study

Frost : Selections

Eugene O’Neill : The Hairy Ape

J.D. Salinger : Catcher in the Rye

Toni Morrison : The Bluest Eye

Allen Ginsberg : “A Supermarket in California”; “Jessore Road”

Edward Albee : The Zoo Story

Fourth Year: Semester II

Course Eng. 405: 20^th Century Fiction

Conrad : Lord Jim

Lawrence : Sons and Lovers

Woolf : Mrs. Dalloway

Joyce : Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Golding : Lord of the Flies

Mauriel Spark : The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Course Eng. 406: Critical Theory

Sydney : “An Apology for Poetry”

Dryden : “Preface to the Fables”

Johnson : “Preface to Shakespeare”

Wordsworth : “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”

Coleridge : “Biographia Literaria (Chapters xiii, xiv, xv,xvii)

Arnold : “The Study of Poetry”

Eliot : “Tradition and the Individual Talent”; “The Metaphysical Poets”

Woolf : A Room of One’s Own

Eagleton : “The Rise of English”

Said : Introduction to Orientalism

Course Eng. 407: Shakespeare

Twelfth Night

Hamlet

Measure for Measure

King Lear

Tempest

Richard II

Henry IV

Course Eng. 408 (A): Language through Literature

Using Literature in the Language Classroom
Literature and the Language Learner
Reading Literature Cross-Culturally
Literature and Language Skills: using short stories, novels, poetry and plays in teaching the language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary and grammar)
Stylistics: Aims and Perspective
Linguistic Description of Literary Texts: Analysis at Word Level; Analysis at Clause Level; Analysis at Sentence Level

Course Eng. 408 (B): Structure of English

Nouns: Position and Function; Noun Classes: count, non-count, proper nouns; Determinatives: pre-determiners, central determiners, post determiners. The use of Articles.
Verb: Major verb classes – time, tense and the verb.
Sequence of Tenses: Conditional.
Adverbs: Characteristics of the adverb – the adverb as a clause element – the adverb and other word classes – syntactic functions of adverbs – correspondence between adjectives and adverbs – comparison of adjectives and adverbs.
Adjectives: Characteristics of the adjective – central and peripheral adjectives – the adjective in relation to other word classes – syntactic function of adjectives – syntactic and semantic sub-classification of adjectives.
Adverbial Phrases – Adjectival phrases – Prepositional phrases – Verb phrases.
Tensed, Non-Tensed and Verbless Clauses.
Voice: Principles of Passivization – Voice Constraints.
Operators and traditional interpretation of the use and usage of modals.

Course Eng. 408 (C): Language and Media

History of Media Technology – special focus on the development of print media
Theory and Aesthetics of Audio-Visual Media – central theories/ philosophy and its impact of media
Feminist Media Studies – critical analysis of gender and sexuality in print media, film, photography
Discourse Analysis of Media – critical analysis of language: examination of ideology; politics of representation
Reception and Use of Media – critical theory of Jean Baudrilliard etc.
Writing for the Media – examine the form and content of popular genres; prepare “copies” of media texts
Reading films – critical examination of films/ film studies

General Reading List

Although the course teachers will provide lists of recommended books (both texts and criticism), it is advisable to procure copies of the following books which will come in handy for the study of literature and language.

M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms.
J.A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory.
Ifor Evans, A Short History of English Literature.
David Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature.
David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.
Kalyan Pandey, Rhetoric and Prosody.
A.S. Hornby, Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary.
Zaman, Alam & Hossain, An English Anthology.
Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vols. I & II.

Industrial Revolution: Causes and Effects

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Industrial Revolution implies the great changes in the economic condition of England brought about by many mechanical inventions for industrial development happening in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century.

Because of England’s expanding colonies, trade and commerce in the eighteenth century, she needed increased supply of products. So there happened many mechanical inventions leading to the Revolution, a gradual process not a single event.

The main inventions are mentioned here:

· Kay’s flying shuttle (1733) which raised the output enormously.

· Hargreave’s ‘Spinning Jenny’ which improved the way of spinning and increased production.

· Arknight in his ‘water-frame’ invented the system of spinning by rollers through water-power.

· Crompton invented his ‘Mule’ improving the previous spinning system.

· ‘The Power loom’ of Cartwright (1785) increased production.

· ‘The Cotton Gin’ of Whitney that could very easily and rapidly remove seeds from the cotton fiber.

· James Watt’s improvement of ‘Steam-engine’ marked revolutionary development of water power in driving the new machinery.

· Next, the necessary transport system was improved in the shape of ‘canals’ by Brindley and ‘good roads’ by Telford and Macadam.

Moreover, England had a large market in her colonies and on the sea to sell her products.

The Industrial Revolution had vast and far-reaching changes and effects in the social, economic and political life of English people. In short some main points of them are –

· Agricultural England turned into Industrial England.

· Two distinct classes-capitalist and labour- came into existence.

· The richer people began to enjoy their lives; morality began to loose them.

· Many people became jobless for handicraft was discouraged.

· The villagers to seek job were running to the cities where industries were established

· So, familial tie lost.

· Extended family decreased and nuclear family increased.

· Labour political parties and socialist ideas grew rapidly.

· It made England a leading and productive country in the world

Why it in England?

· Peace in the land.

· New scientific invention modernized the minds of the England

· Vast market

· Plenty of iron and coil in the country.

The faults of English drama from French viewpoint and the English defense against those allegations

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Dryden’s “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” is a major critical document and significant landmark in the history of English Literary criticism. It has been presented through dialogue among four persons – Crites standing for the ancient drama, Eugenius for the modern drama, Lisideius for the French drama and Neander for the English drama. Like Crites and Eugenius, Lisidieus holds that the classical rules for the imitation of nature are indeed the fundamentals of correct dramatic creation. He finds faults with the contemporary English drama that the perfect realization of the rules is not to be found in the English drama, but in the French.

The first fault with English drama in the eye of Lisidius is the tragi-comedy. He says that according to Aristotle, the end of tragedy is “to beget admiration, compassion, or concernment”. But mirth and compassion are opposite to each other. And these opposite things are mingled in the English tragic-comedy. Lisideius treats it as a folly which spoils the very purpose of tragedy. He says, “There is no theatre in the world has anything as absurd as the English tragic-comedy.”

Moreover, he compares tragic-comedy with ‘Bedlam’. Because, we find “here a course of mirth, there another of sadness and passion, and a third of honour and a duel: thus in two hours and a half, we run through all the fits of Bedlam”.

To refute Lisideius’s view and defend the English tragic-comedy, we can agree with Neander’s view.

First, he disagrees with Lisideius’s view that after a scene of great passion and concernment one can not speedily recollect oneself and pass on to another scene of mirth and humour with relish. According to him, the eye can pass in a second from an unpleasant object to a pleasant one: similarly the soul can also pass from the one to the another in a trice, for the soul is not slower than the senses.

Second, the contraries when placed together set off each other.

Third, a scene of mirth introduced in a tragedy refreshes and provides relief. Neander as well as Dryden himself opines, “A scene of mirth mixed with tragedy, has the same effect upon us which our music has betwixt the acts.”

Fourth, compassion and mirth do not destroy each other; they are found in nature also. Therefore, tragic-comedy best represents nature.

Fifth, the English “have invented, increased and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the stage, than was ever known to the ancients or moderns of any nation, which is tragic-comedy.”

Another charge against the English drama is that there is no just representation of nature, but a drawing of her in miniature. For example, Shakespeare cramps the business of thirty years into two to three hours. This instead of making a play delightful makes it ridiculous.

Lisideius finds another fault with the English drama about the multiplicity of plot. He says that the English dramatists “multiply adventures; which, not being produced from one another, constitute many actions in the drama and consequently make it many plays.” As a result, there is not enough time to represent one passion well and fully, because of its being hurried from one to another.

Neander admits that the English dramas, “besides the main design have underplots or by concernments, of less considerable persons and intrigues.” But they are carried forward along with the main action so skillfully that it is wrong to suppose that such sub plots hinder the main action the unity of action. Rather they form one organic whole. Thus the variety and copiousness of the English creates “a greater pleasure to the audience.”

Lisideius is also against the English drama’s representation of “duels, battles and the like of bloodshed, violence, tumult which should be off the stage by maintaining a skillful ‘narration’ technique.

Neander also agrees with Lisideius that death should not perform on the stage. The great Ben Johnson himself has avoided representing death in his tragedies, ‘Sejanus’ and ‘Catilline’.

Lisideius mentions some other inferiorities of the English to the French. Unnatural, unjustified and sudden conversions or changes of character are frequent in English plays as in “The Scornful Lady”. The English are not so skillful in that the exit of a character in one scene should prepare as for his entrance in the next. The English like the French, also use rhyme, but generally their rhymed plays are badly written.

Finally we can say that the faults of English drama as found by Lisideius actually exposes the novelty, variety and copiousness of the English. They have been able to come out from the restrictions of rules and narrowness of imagination, but the French have not. If we regard “novelty is better than repetition”, as a ground of criticism, we must say that the English are the best inventors or innovators while the French are the best imitators or repeaters.

Nature in Adonais

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Nature has a great role in Romantic poetry. Similarly, Shelley is not beyond this tendency. Adonais, one of his most famous poems, being a pastoral elegy, contains natural setting, natural elements, natural characters etc. In addition, Shelley extracts images, symbols and nature myths from nature. Besides, in thematic aspect, nature has a great philosophic concern in this poem.

In the form of a pastoral elegy, the speaker and the person whom he mourns both are shown as shepherds; and we know that shepherds are closely related with nature and natural environment. Moreover, there are many other mourners derived from nature.

Like all other poems of Shelley, in Adonais, there are numerous nature images well drawn by an experienced hand. For example, the young spring, made ‘wild’ with grief, throws down ‘her kindling buds as if she Autumn were’; Again –

The airs and streams renew their joyous tone,

The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear,

Fresh leaves and flowers deck and dead seasons

The amorous birds now pair in every brake,

And build their mossy homes in field and brere

And the green lizard, and the golden snake,

Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

The concrete images of these lines present, with great success, the mood of enraptured joy associated with the season.

With symbolism, Shelley gives concrete shape to his abstract thoughts and emotions. The vastness of Nature is an unending source of symbols to him. In Adonais “pansies” are the symbol of the fate of his poetry and “violets” of his modesty and innocence. Objects of Nature, such as sky, stars, sun, moon, wind and river, often stand for eternity in Shelley’s poetry. In ‘Adonais’, too, we find such a reference to the immortality of stars –

“And the immortal stars awake again”

With the capacity to feel Nature and its phenomena, Shelley creates nature myths in ‘Adonais’. “He can detach himself from the past and the present and go on creating fresh and new nature myths at will. ‘Adonais’ is full of such myths, that is, personifications of Nature. Morning, thunder, ocean, winds, echo, spring and other aspects of Nature have been personified and made to mourn the death of Keats to establish the bond of love that united nature with mankind.”

The Spanish Tragedy as a revenge tragedy

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Thomas Kyd’s ‘The Spanish Tragedy’ established in English literature a form of drama, called Revenge Tragedy following the tradition of Seneca. Revenge tragedy is called so because the driving force of action in it is revenge, a Senecan spirit. However revenge here is not a wild kind of justice but a sacred and solemn duty which may hardly be denied. It is usually characterized by bloody deeds, intrigue, high melodrama, supernatural horror, violent imagery, suicide.

At the time of Thomas Kyd, the English society, full of injustice but not getting proper justice, was in demand to take revenge. Kyd in his tragedy fulfilled the demand of the audience by bringing revenge motive in drama, and made them satisfied by punishing the vice, though the avenger committed suicide. Let us now discuss the elements in the play considered as the elements of revenge tragedy.

At the very first, we are introduced with two ghosts – the Ghost of Andrea and Revenge. Andrea was in love with Bel-imperia, and was killed in a battle by Balthazar, son of Portuguese viceroy. But it could not be decided where to send his soul – to ‘fields of love’ or to ‘martial fields’, because he was both a lover and a soldier. At last Andrea’s ghost is taken back to the human world of the living so that he can see how Andrea’s murderer, Balthazar will be punished by Bel-imperia, Andrea’s beloved. They serve as spectators

“Here sit we down to see the mystery,

And serve for chorus in this tragedy.”

From Andrea’s speech we also know a picture of punishment of sinners in the under-world which produces in our mind a sort of supernatural horror which is an element of revenge tragedy. Some of the description can be mentioned –

Where the userers are chocked with melting gold

And wantons are embraced with ugly snakes,

And murderers groan with never-killing wounds,

And perjured weights scalded in boiling lead,

And all foul sins with torments overhelmed.”

Quest for revenge is the principal motive behind the action of revenge tragedy. In this play, desire for revenge is to be found in the heart of Andrea’s ghost, of Bel-imperia, of Isabella, and above all, of Hieronimo. Even Lorenzo and Balthazar desire to take revenge on their rival, Bel-imperia’s lover, Horatio. Bel-imiperia cannot warmly respond to Horatio’s love because of her quest for revenge:

“How can love find harbour in my breast?

Till I revenge the death of my beloved?”

Further, Hieronimo, seeing the deadbody of Horatio and wounds with it, says,

“I’ll not entomb them till I have revenged”

But Hieronimo makes delay of action in spite of receiving a ‘bloody writ’ (letter), having proper evidence from Bel-emperio. He tries to identify the actual murderer and make a faultless plan to punish the murderer.

He says,

“Dear was the life of my beloved son

And of his death behoves me be revenged”

However, the revenge is not shown as injustice but a sacred and solemn duty.

Hieronymo reads form Bible,

Vindicta mithi !

Ay, heaven will be revenged of every ill

Nor will they suffer murder unrepaid.

But, he thinks if criminals are allowed more time, they will commit more crimes. So he must take revenge.

As a characteristic of revenge tragedy, we find, in the account of battle given by the Spanish General, violent imagery which produces a feeling of sensational and melodramatic horror in our mind. Some of his account is given below –

“Here falls a body scindered from his head,

There legs and arms lie bleeding on the grass,

Mingled with weapons and unbowelled steeds.”

We find in the Spanish Tragedy a villainous character in the person of Lorenzo, assisted by Serberine and Pedringano. Even Balthazar associates in his villainous deeds.

Intrigue is characterized by Senecan as well as revenge tragedy. There are powerful intrigues in the villainous deeds of Lorenzo. Moreover, Villuppo makes an intrigue against Alexandra who is falsely charged to have killed the prince, Balthazar. He says indicating Alexandra –

“Under the colour of a duteous friend,

Discharged his pistol at the princes back,”

His purpose was to get reward and to be superior him suppressing him.

In The Spanish Tragedy, the action ends with the stage performance of ‘a play-within-a play’ which contributes much to the story and flow of the play. In this short play Hieronima enacts his plan to take revenge on the murderers of his son, Horatio.

Insanity is a characteristic of revenge tragedy. Some characters of the play become insane for their dearest relation’s ruthless murder. In this play Isabella becomes insane and “She cuts down the arbour.” Again some of Hieronimo’s activities prove his insanity, partly real partly intended to ease his taking revenge.

Suicide is another characteristic of a revenge tragedy. Three virtuous characters of the Spanish Tragedy commit suicide. Isabella becomes insane for her son and commits suicide –

And with this weapon will wound the breast,

The hapless breast that gave Horatio suck

[She Stabs herself]

Again Bel-imperia and Hieronimo also commit suicide after performing their ‘play-within-a play’.

Above all, a revenge tragedy is marked by ‘gruesomely bloody ending’. At the end of The Spanish Tragedy, we see a lot of bleeding through some murders and suicides. Though there are some other murders earlier in the play, the ending part is more gruesome. Because the murders happen simultaneously. The king getting puzzled cries out addressing Hieronimo,

“Speak, traitor: damned, bloody murderer, speak!

Why last than done this undeserving deed?”

In fine, we see that Thomas Kyd is the pioneer of revenge tragedy following Senecan tradition, (though Senecan plays were for reading out not for enacting). M.H. Abrams says regarding revenge tragedy and The Spanish Tragedy,

“Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (1586) established this popular form; its subject is a murder and the quest for vengeance, and it includes a ghost, insanity, suicide a play- within- a play, sensational incidents, and a gruesomely bloody ending.” (First printed in India, 2004)

Syllabus, Department of English, Session 2003-2004, Islamic University, Kushtia, Bangladesh

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Department of English

Islamic University

Syllabus

(Session: 2003-2004)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kushtia- 7003. Phone: 071-62201- 62206, 62005-62008 Ext: 2221, 2424

ACADEMIC COURSES

(Session: 2003-2004)

Department of English

Islamic University

Marks Distribution for B.A. (Hon’s) Courses

Departmental Courses	1400
Allied Courses	400
Non-Credit Course	100
Tutorial	100
Viva Voce	100
Total Marks	2100

FIRST YEAR

D Course :	English Language	100
D Course :	Introduction to Literature : Poetry and Drama	100
D Course :	Introduction to Literature: Fiction and Non-fiction	100
D Course :	History of English Literature	100
NC Course :	Islamic/ Bangladesh Studies	100
Tutorial :		20
Viva Voce :		20
Total :		540

SECOND YEAR

D Course :	Poetry from Chaucer to Milton	100
D Course :	Prose from Bacon to Lamb	100
D Course :	History of England	100
D Course :	Philosophy	100
Tutorial :		20
Viva Voce :		20
Total :		440

THIRD YEAR

D Course :	Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama	100
D Course :	Restoration and 18^th Century Literature	100
D Course :	Romantic Poetry	100
D Course :	Literature Theory and Practical Criticism	100
D Course :	Introduction to Linguistics	100
Tutorial :		30
Viva Voce :		30
Total :		560

FOURTH YEAR

D Course :	Classics in Translation	100
D Course :	Victorian Literature	100
D Course :	18^th and 19^th Century Novels	100
D Course :	20^th Century Critical Theory	100
D Course :	Folklore/History of English Language	100
Tutorial :		30
Viva Voce :		30
Total :		560

Syllabus

FIRST YEAR

D Course 101: English Language

A)Phonetics: Sound, IPA symbol, word transcription, intonation and stress.

B)Word-formation: Morphology, affix, idiomatic expression, varieties of English-colloquial and informal, standard and formal, British and American etc.

C) Grammar:

(i) Agreements, phrases and their structures, transformation of sentences.

(ii) Simple sentence and their structures, compound sentences, complex sentences, principal and subordinate clauses.

(iii) Misplaced modifiers, inversion, parallelism, linkers, defective subordination and incongruity.

D) Comprehension: This part of the course will teach the following abilities:

a) to react to sensory images

b) to interpret connotation and commutative meanings

c) to understand words in context and to select the meaning that fits the context

d) to understand the main ideal of passages of text

e) to perceive the organization of passages of text

f) to recognize and interpret figurative expressions

g) to make inferences, draw conclusions and supply implied details

h) to identify informal/formal language

i) to understand sentence structures

Basic and advanced reading strategies: vocabulary studies, tone, mood and purpose, prediction, inference, analysis and interpretation, connotation and denotation, context and meaning, figurative expression, organizational feature, skimming scanning etc.

E) Composition:

(i) Paragraph:

Paragraph structure, topic sentences, transitional devices, unity, order, coherence and conclusion.

(ii) Essay:

Essay structure – beginning, middle, end

Essay forms – narrative, descriptive, expository

F) Mechanics of Writing: Critical essay, report, research article, formal and informal letter, specific-purpose writing etc.

G) Listening and Note-Taking: Listening to recorded texts and class lectures and learning to take useful notes based on listening.

H) Communicative English: Greeting, informal and formal introduction, asking for and giving information, asking for and offering help, advice, suggestion, expressing opinion, complaint, inability/ability, obligation, dislike/likes, making request etc.

D Course 102: Introduction to Literature: Poetry and Drama

A) Rhetoric and Prosody

B) Poetry:

Shakespeare (1564-1616) : Sonnets 116 & 130

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) : Delight in Disorder

Milton (1608-1674) : On His Blindness

Gray (1716-1771) : Elegy Written in a County Churchyard

Keats (1795-1821) : Ode on a Grecian Urn

Browning (1812-1889) : My Last Duchess

Eliot (1888-1965) : The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Ezra pound (1885-1972) : In a Station of the Metro

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) : Fern Hill

Ted Hughes (1930-1998) : Jagure

Seamus Heany (1939-alive) : Digging

C) Drama:

Sophocles (496-406 BC) : Oedipus the King

Shakespeare (1564-1616) : The Merchant of Venice

Shaw (1856-1950) : Arms and the Man

Synge (1871-1909) : Riders to the Sea

D Course 103: Introduction to Literature (Fiction & Non Fiction)

A) Fiction:

Maugham (1874-1965) : The Ant and the Grasshopper

K Mansfield (1888-1923) : The Garden Party

Orwell (1903-1950) : Animal Farm

Joyce (1882-1941) : Araby

Golding (1911-1993) : Lord of the Flies

B) Non-fiction:

Swift (1667-1745) : A Modest Proposal

F R Leavies (1895-1978) : Literature and Society

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) : Tragedy and the Whole Truth

Lawrence (1885-1930) : Why the Novel Matters?

D Course 104: History of English Literature from the Anglo-Saxon Period to the 2^nd World War.

NC Courses 105: Islamic/ Bangladesh Studies

SECOND YEAR

D Course 201: Prose from Bacon to Lamb

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) : Of Truth, Of Marriage and Single Life, Of Superstition, Of Travel, Of Great Place, Of Studies, Of Revenge, Of Love

Addison & Steel (1672-1719) : Selection (Total Five) from The Cover ley Papers as in the Norton Anthology

Milton (1608-1674) : Areopagitica

Bunyan (1628-1688) : The Pilgrim’s Progress, Book- 1

Lamb (1775-1834) : Selection (Total Five) from Essays of Elia as in the Norton Anthology

D Course 202: Romantic Poetry

Blake (1757-1827) : Selection from Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Wordsworth (1770-1850) : The Prelude, Book-1, Immortality Ode, Tintern Abbey

Coleridge (1772-1834) : The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ‘Kubla Khan’ Dejection: An Ode

Byron (1795-1821) : Don Juan: Book-1

Shelley (1792-1822) : Ode to the West Wind, Ode to a Skylark, Adonis

Keats (1795-1821) : The Odes

A Course 203: History of England (1066 to the 2^nd World War)

A Course 204: Philosophy: Problems of Philosophy-definition, nature, scope relation to life and literature, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Axiology. Theories of Reality: Materialism and Idealism. Theories of Evolution: Creation and Evolution, Mechanical and Emergent Evolution, Mechanism vs. Theology. The Philosophy of God: Theism, Deism and Pantheism, God and the problem of Evil. Western Ideas: Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, Erasmus Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Comte, Nietzsche, Schopenhaur, Keirkegaard Jasper, Sartre, Camus, Karl Marx, Mary Wollstonecraft, Eastern Ideas: The Vedas, The Upanishads, Buddhism, Carvaka, Confucianism, Taoism, Schools of Muslim Philosophy, Sufism.

THIRD YEAR

D Course 301: Poetry from Chaucer to Milton

Chaucer (c.1343-1400) : Then Canterbury Tales, The Prologue, Nun’s Priest’s Tale,

Spenser (1552-99) : The Faerie Queene, Book -1 (Canto 1, ix and x)

Donne (c. 1571-1631) : The Good-Morrow, Go and Catch a Falling Star, The Canonization, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Death Be Not Proud, Twicknam Garden, Hymn to God, My God in My Sickness.

Marvell (1621-78) : The Garden, To His Coy Mistress, The Definition of Love.

Milton (1608-74) : Paradise Lost, Book ix and x: Samson Agonistes

D Course 302: Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama

Kyd (1558-94) : The Spanish Tragedy

Marloe (1564-1593) : Dr. Faustus

Shakespeare (1564-1616) : As You Like It, Macbeth

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) : Volpone

Webster (1578-1634) : The Duchess of Malfi

D Course 303: Restoration and 18^th Century Literature

Dryden (1638-1700) : Absalom and Achitophel

Pope (1688-1744) : The Rape of The Lock

Swift (1667-1745) : Guliver’s Travels, Book-1 &4

Defoe (1660-1731) : Robinson Crusoe

Congreve (1670-1729) : The Way of the World

Sheridan (1751-1816) : The Rivals

D Course 304: Literary Theory & Practical Criticism.

Sydney (1554-1586) : An Apologie for Poetry

Dryden (1631-1700) : An Essay on Dramatic Poesy

Johnson (1709-1784) : The Preface to Shakespeare

Wordsworth (1770-1834) : Preface to Lyrical Ballads

Coleridge (1772-1894) : Biographia Literaryia (Chapters xii, xiv, xv, xvii)

Arnold (1822-1888) : The Study of Poetry

Eliot (1888-1965) : Tradition and the Individual Talent

A Course 305: Introduction to Linguistics

Linguistics and the study of language

Language-definition, characteristics and origins

Relationship between linguistics and literature

Basic concepts in linguistics

Different levels of linguistics - Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis.

Sociolinguistics and Psycholinguistics

Schools of Linguistics

Saussure : Synchronic and Diachronic, syntagmatic/Paradigmatic, Langue/Parole, Signifier/Signified.

Bloomfield : American Structuralism

Chomsky : Competence/Performance

Halliday : Social context & Linguistics

FOURHT YEAR

D Course 401: Classics in Translation

Homer (8^th century) : The IIiad

Virgil (70-19 BC) : The Aeneid

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) : Agamemnon

Aristophanes (450-385 BCF) : Frogs

Euripides (480-406 BC) : Medea

Anonymous : Beowulf

D Course 402: Victorian Literature

Tennyson (1809-92) : ‘Mariana’, The Lady of Shallot, In Memoriam, (Selections)

Browning (1812-1889) : Fra Lippo Lippi, Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Last Ride Together, Andrea del Sarto

Arnold (1822-88) : The Forsaken Merman, The Scholar Gipsy, Dover Beach, Thyrsis, The Rugby Chapel

Mill (1806-73) : On Liberty, Chapter-1

Newman (1801-90) : The Idea of a University, Chapter: 5, 6 & 7

Arnold (1822-88) : Culture and Anarchy, Chapter: 2 & 3

D Course 403: 18^th and 19^th Century Novels

Fielding (1707-1754) : Tom Jones

Austen (1775-1817) : Pride and Prejudice

Bronte (1818-1848) : Wuthering Heights

Dickens (1812-1870) : Great Expectations

Hardy (1840-1928) : The Return of the Native

D Course 404: 20^th Century Critical Theory (From Russian Formalism to French Deconstruction)

D Course 405: (a) Folklore and Cultural Anthropology

(b) Applied Linguistics

(c) History of English Language

(a) Folklore and Cultural Anthropology:

Context and Relevance of Program:

Increasingly scholars from various disciplines turn towards folklore study for a clearer understanding of man. In Bangladesh, there is also an excellent context of such a research trend. However, this needs to be given a momentum and a way to sustain the momentum has to be sought out. The proposed program regarding the study of folklore and cultural anthropology, as we hope, will form a significant part of such an attempt at invigorating the study of folklore.

Object of Program:

(a) To provide the students necessary skill in collecting and preserving folk materials;

(b) To provide the students sufficient theoretical knowledge for understanding and analyzing folk performances and practices;

(d) To orient the students to turn towards the culture of the people

(e) To learn the forces those shape the social and cultural matrix of Bangladesh;

(f) To initiate the students in practice of communication rooted in the traditions of the people

1. Folklore: Definition Nature, Scope, Role, Folklore, Culture Anthropology and Literature,

2. Ethnography: Participant Observation, Emic and Etic, Fieldwork, Folklore Art, Literature, Music and Sports.

3. Concept of Culture: Characteristics, Subculture, Individual Variation and Culture, Culture as Real and Ideal; Cultural Integration, Adaptation; Culture images; Diffusion

4. Economics: Anthropological Point of view – Economic System, Production, Evolution, Organization of Labour; Distribution: System of exchange – Reciprocity, Redistribution, Potlatch, Kula

5. Family & Marriage: Marriage, Definition, Type, Function, Incest family and Its Function, Types of family etc., Post-material residence pattern

6. Kinship and Association: Descent; Rules & Type, Classification of Kin: Type of kinship terminology, Lineage, Clan, Tribe, Totem

7. Religion: Function, Religion, and Symbolism, Totem and Taboo, Sacred and Profane, Kinds of Beliefs; Practices and Rituals, Magic, Organization of Religion: Shamanistic cults, Communal cult, Ecclesiastical cult, Revitalization

8. Society and Politics: Political Integration, Leadership, Band, Social control, Primitive communism, Conflict resolution etc.

9. International Folklore

10. Folklore in Bangladesh

(b) Applied Linguistics

The teaching of listening speaking, reading and writing skills:

The development of Reading skills:

Strategies and speed reading, skimming, scanning, predicting, inferencing, analyzing and interpreting variety of texts and text types, silent reading and reading aloud, intensive and extensive reading, non-interventions, reading program and intervention.

The development of writing skills:

Difference between spoken and written English, Controlled, Guided and free writing activities, Reading and writing skills – critical analysis and interpretation of texts – Essays, Report writing, Book review, Research papers, Writing goals, Writing in the pre-speaking stage, Writing and oral production. Writing to practice monitoring. Functional writing goals.

The development of listening skills:

Developing strategies for listening comprehension, listening comprehension activities.

The development of speaking skills:

Oral communication development, Affective humanistic activities- Dialogues, interviews, preference ranking, personal charts and tables. Revealing information about yourself. Activities using the imagination; Problem solving activities tasks and series, charts, graphs and maps, developing speech for particular situations, advertisements, games, content activities. Grouping techniques for acquisition activities reconstructing, one-centred, unified group, dyads, small groups, large groups. Fluency and accuracy controlled and free speaking activities, oral presentation – Brainstorming, discussing and reporting, debates, extempore speech interviews, role play/ simulations.

The methodology of language teaching:

Including methods, course and syllabus design, Traditional and communicative methods/approaches, Syllabus design-purpose, construction, needs analysis, Types-structural and communicative approaches, Selection and gradation-principles.

Language testing:

General principles of testing and testing the four skills, different types of tests, ways of designing test items on elements and skills, Criteria of good tests-validity and reliability, for testing language elements, for testing communicative competence, Requirement of a test.

Language learner in the classroom:

Individual learning differences-attitude, aptitude, memory, motivation, age, personality, and cognitive style, Learning strategies-social, cognitive and communication, Classroom interaction-mode of teacher talk and class management with large/small classes.

(c) History of English Language: (as in the syllabus of 1999-2000 academic Session. Course contents will be given by the course teacher.)

Rousseau’s theory of the Social Contract

2013-03-31T02:02:00.002+06:00

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), one of the greatest French philosophers in the eighteenth century, revealed his famous theory of the “Social Contract” in his master piece, “Du contract social” (trs. as The Social Contact). In this theory, “Rousseau returns to the defense of democratic, republican ideals modeled upon ancient Sparta, and centered upon the idea of freedom as active participation in politics and legislation.” However, the theory of social contract of Rousseau is somewhat different from those of Hobbes and Locke.

The first chapter of the Social Contract opens with these famous lines –

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are.”

According to Rousseau, man was instinctively free, generous, simple, brave and vigorous. There was no hatred, conflict or negative quality in them, as described by Hobbes. They were happy in the ‘State of Nature’. There was perfect freedom and equality. They were noble savages, kind and sympathetic towards their fellow people, and far away form vice and sin. But this state of perfect happiness did not continue for long time. With the growth of population and the rise of private property, there began disorder among the people. To get rid of this situation they felt the need of law, institution, society and government. At last they made a contract among them and for the sake of forming society they gave the right to govern them to the ‘General Will’ (not to any king). They made contract with all and each. Thus, all depended upon each and each upon all. In short, each was under the control of the community as a whole. The community was sovereign. The ruler was a subordinate authority.

The General Will is the most critical and most important aspect in the Social Contract. “The conception of Rousseau’s mind seems to be this: every man’s political opinion is governed by self-interests, but self interest consists of two parts, one of which is peculiar to the individual, while the other is common to all the members of the community.” Actually the latter one is emphasized in General Will: General Will is neither ones personal will nor the will of the majority. Rather it implies the good will of the entire community. It will be clear by the following example – After having won in a war, the army of Corinth gained a piece of gold. Then the army said that it should be divided among them, as they had fought against the enemy. On the other hands, the people claimed that they should be given it because the army was reared by their money. However there was another opinion that they should buy a war–ship to protect the foreign attack by selling the piece of gold. By this example, Rousseau wants to imply the first opinion as the will of the minority, the second as of the majority, and the third as the general will.

Rousseau advocated direct popular government so that the people themselves could express the General Will in a meeting, and could be involved with the law making function of the state. The government should exercise the executive function. People must obey the decisions of the General will. The citizen is ‘forced to be free’ by being constrained to follow the General Will.

The main features of Rousseau’s theory are following –

· The State of Nature was pre-political

· The contract was collective and the purpose was to bring goodness for all.

· Equality and freedom of people were kept.

· By this contract they received more than what they lost.

· Low is the expression of people’s will.

Importance of the Social Contract:

· The Social Contract inspired the French Revolution as well as many other revolutions for personal freedom.

· Though it had limitations, it wanted to do the welfare of people.

· It has an important role in the growth and development of modern democracy.

Criticism:

· When Rousseau speaks of democracy, he means, as the Greeks meant, direct participation of every citizen, representative government he calls ‘elective aristocracy’. Since the former is not possible in a large state, his praise of democracy always implies praise of the city state. (Russell, P-669)

· The Social Contract has no historical evidence that how and when this contract was introduced. So, it is an imaginary thing.

· There is a possibility of rising totalitarianism.

· Everyone is bound to abide by the general will. So, it may hamper personal freedom.

In fine, it can be said that by this illogical contract Rousseau wanted to establish welfare of the people. On one hand, he speaks of democratic value. But on the other, he tells us the sovereignty of the state. So he may be called a Totalitarian Democrat.

Buddhist's Nirvana: Definition, Nature, Characteristics and how to achieve

2013-03-28T02:51:00.001+06:00

Buddhism consists of two types of concept – one being negative and another positive. It starts with the pessimistic thought that human life is full of suffering (duhkha, dukkha in Pali). Men are responsible for their deeds. At the same time of their death, they become dissatisfied with their evil deeds, and later they get rebirth as dictated by their ‘Karma’, and thus, they can not get rid of the ‘bondage of life, death and rebirth (samsara). However, the Buddha suggests optimistically, all the suffering can cease to an end and the rebirth can be stopped by achieving ‘Nirvana’, the highest stage of Buddhist philosophy. Now, we shall discuss what Nirvana is, what its nature and characteristics are, and how one can achieve Nirvana.

Simon Blackburn, in his Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, defines Nirvana as –

“The perfect or beatific state characterized by the extinction of desires and passions and the transcending of the separate existence of the self.”

As Nirvana is often misunderstood, we should make the concept of Nirvana clear through further discussion.

Nirvana does not mean enaction. (“Nirvana is not renunciation of actions), but the purging of all actions, of attachment, aversion and delusion.” According to the Majjhima Nikaya and the Melinda Panda, Nirvana can be achieved even by a householder. (Not intense particularization, isolation and withdrawal)

“Nirvana is not death but eternal life, not annihilation but immortality not destruction but indestructibility; were truth and mortality negative, Nirvana would have been negative also; as they are positive, Nirvana is positive.”

We can mention an example of the very life of the Buddha who, after attainment of Nirvana, spent forty-five years of his life in preaching to the suffering people the way to end all suffering.

Many critics have considered Nirvana to be “a sophisticated version of suicide, a goal of self extinction, complete nihilism and absolute zero”. But Nirvana means only extinction of the evil, the desire, the craving, the fires which are the sources of all suffering, and not extinction of existence or life. ‘In Nirvana, the physical form remains, but the will to live be completely destroyed.’ After death, one attains ‘parinirvana’. So, ‘parinirvana’ menas death, but nirvana does not.

The Buddha has talked of two types of desire and emotion – one is noble, another ignoble. Noble desire is not the desire for the worldly things. Buddha has only taught us to give up the latter. In addition, the attainment of nirvana is consistent with noble emotions – love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity – and with actions for the good of the community. So, the primary meaning of Nirvana, the extinction of pain and suffering does not mean the elimination of all feelings, emotions and desires.

Actually, nirvana is a guarantee that rebirth will not occur, as ‘The Sutta Nipata’ refers to nirvana as the end of the wheel of birth and death. “The liberated person’s old Karma is exhausted, no new Karma is produced and longing after the future life is destroyed; the will to live being destroyed and no new craving for becoming springing up within him, he is extinguished like a lamp.”

As we mentioned earlier that Buddha’s doctrine begins with negative implication that human life is full of suffering. But this suffering can be turned into supreme joy and happiness by attaining Nirvana. “Pleasure is an empirical feeling and therefore painful. Nirvana is the supreme, perfect and eternal happiness; it is the blissful end, the highest good or the ‘summum bonum’ of man’s life.” Buddha says –

“There is no fire like passion, no ill like hatred; there is no happiness higher than tranquility.”

In Buddhism the terms, ‘atman’ (self or soul) and ‘nirvana’ are often misunderstood by different thinkers and the readers; and a question is raised that “can the concepts of Anatma and Nirvana be reconciled? Because, according to the second of the four Noble Truths, men are responsible for their deeds, and clinged with ‘samsara’ or the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. On the other hand Nirvana annihilates and transcends the separate existence of self. So there appears an apparent contradiction between the two ideas.

However, this contradiction can be easily resolved “by regarding suffering, craving ignorance and other links of the chain of causation or dependent origination (pratity asamutpada) as purely empirical, or rooted in Karma and by regarding nirvana as transcendental, the ultimate state of liberation, therefore would be regarded as the annihilation of the empirical self.” “In fact, nirvana is a state which is attained when all defilements, obsessions and imperfections of the empirical phenomenal self are made to disappear by self discipline and possession of perfect calm and tranquility.”

Therefore, to escape the contradiction of karma, to facilitate the freedom of the self from attachment to the world leading to suffering, the Buddha thought of nirvana.”

Actually, the Buddha’s observation of suffering of human life can be regarded as logical. But nirvana the ultimate goal of Buddhism can not be defined by logic. “Neither the self is unread nor is the term ‘nirvana’ definable. Whatever attempts have been made to define it in words or phrases like annihilation, extinction, delivered emancipation, highest rapture, state of equanimity etc., have all been unsatisfactory. The state of nirvana is ultimately indefinable.

Now we can discuss how to achieve Nirvana

According to the last of the four noble truths, the “eightfold path” is the key to release from suffering. It is the Middle Path which tends to calm, to higher knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana. They are:

Right view
Right aspiration
Right speech
Right action
Right livelihood
Right effort.
Right mindfulness
Right connection.

The Buddha has declared – “Nirvana is where precepts of justice and morality are followed; when fires of greed, of hatred and of delusion and the flames of all passions are extinguished then Nirvana is reached.”

He advises us to keep ourselves away from evil and to know the root of evil. He says –

“Killing is evil, stealing is evil, yielding to sexual passion is evil, lying is evil, slandering is evil, abuse is evil, gossip is evil, envy is evil, hatred is evil, to cling to false doctrine is evil” and “desire is the root of evil, hatred is the root of evil, illusion is the root of evil.”

Pure acts are very important in Buddhism. The pure acts are those in which there is absence of desire, passion, ignorance, lust, hatred and which lead one to conquer all these. On the other hand, acts, contrary to these pure acts are impure acts. In fact pure acts “prepare the path of an individual to Nirvana.”

Meditation is stressed to reach Nirvana. The Buddha has said –

Meditation on transitoriness leads to victory over greed; meditation on suffering leads to the annihilation of hatred; meditation on the non-existence of an immortal soul leads to cessation of selfishness.

“According to Buddhist doctrine the path of knowledge is narrow. It is possible for every man to achieve Eternal Salvation.” So one should cultivate ten ideal virtues. They are –

Charity
Purity of thought
Patience
Strenuousness
Meditation
Intelligence
Employment of right means
Resoluteness
Strength, and
Knowledge.

Love is also very important to achieve Nirvana. “Love according to the Buddha did not mean an attachment to a person or an object through which one hopes to satisfy his selfish cravings, but an endless self-immolating compassion freely flowing towards all creatures and possessing an inherent condition of enlargement.”

Teachings of Confucianism / Qualities of a Moral Man or Superior Man

2013-03-28T01:57:00.001+06:00

Confucius, the ‘uncrowned king of China’, founded Confucianism, one of the three religions practiced in China – namely Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, thought there are debates regarding the question “Is Confucianism a philosophy or religion?”. But in true sense, he did not give the world a new religion or a new ethical code but a forceful restatement of the fundamental principles of human morality and ethics. In fact he himself was a vivid example or symbol of his teachings or Confucianism symbols. In other words, Confucianism or teachings of Confucianism stood for a rationalized social order through the ethical approach, based on personal cultivation.

Now we should know, though may be a little, about Confucius, his personality and Confucian philosophy. “Born in poverty in Shantung, Confucius (551-479 BC) rose to become a major administrator in his native state.” But, finally he decided to relinquish his long and vain attempts to create order by the use of rites and rules of antiquity. “In 496 BC he began a period of wandering with the intention of persuading the various rulers he came among to practice his moral doctrines”. “To give an entire picture of the personality of Confucius is an impossibility; however, we may mention some of his distinguishing qualities. He was a scholar, a teacher, a perfect gentleman and a saint. He was economical in living, moderate in desire, exact in manner, refined in form, precise in speech, slow but sure in action, restful and free in mind, pure in heart, altruistic in aim, and ever sympathetic towards man.” He was kind, generous, humble, and truthful even in detail. [He loved authority and discipline, and had a great admiration for antiquity. His disciples inform us that “there were four things from which the Master was entirely free. He had no foregone conclusions, no arbitrary pre-determination, no obstinacy and no egoism.” He called himself ‘a transmitter and not a maker’ that is he acted as a transmitter of the earlier religious. But this does not mean that he did not have his creative power or originality. But, his own doctrine was very simple and practical for the people to cultivate themselves to be moral men, because he did not want to create any new and deep difficult religion. For this reason he wrote five classics dealing mostly with the previous religions, morals and history.

They are –

(a) The Book of Records

(b) The Book of Odes

(d) The Book of History

(e) The Spring and Autumn Annals.

However, “his (own) saying were collected by pupils in the Lun Yii or Analects which form the principle source for his philosophy” and in the ‘Discourses and Dialogues’.

“He did not talk about spiritual beings, or extraordinary things or feats of strength and disorders. He insisted on the cultivation of ethics, loyalty and truthfulness.”

He kept in view four things in his teachings. They are –

Scholarliness
Conduct of life.
Honesty and
Faithfulness.

Moreover, his purpose was to make people ‘superior men’ as well as ‘moral men’. So, he explained how a man can make himself superior and moral.

Wisdom or scholarliness, morality and determination have great significance in Confucianism. Confucius said that wisdom grows from the family and that the foundation of society is a disciplined individual in an orderly family. Self development is the substance of social development. [The keynote and the soul of his philosophy is expressed in the famous paragraphs of the great learning.

The ancients who wished to illustrate the highest virtue throughout the empire first ordered well their own states; wishing to order well their own states they first regulated their families they first cultivated their own selves; wishing to cultivate their own selves, they first rectified their Riarts; wishing to rectify their hearts, they sought to be sincere in their thoughts, wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.”

By this Confucius has given here a gradual process for self development, and the ways by which it flows into common life to serve the state; these are the –

Investigation of Phenomenon,
Learning
Sincerity
Rectitude of Purpose
Self-development
Family discipline
Local self-Government and
Universal self-Government.

In order to improve well-being and welfare of society, Confucius’s social ideal is harmony. According to him, there are five Confucianism relationships

of which the society is made up. They are husband and wife, parent and child, elders and youngers, Ruler and subject, friend and friend.

“If everybody feels attached to his kith and kin and respects his superior there will be peace under Heaven”

Confucius exerted himself in giving moral training to his people, and he laid great emphasis on virtuous conduct. According to him a virtuous man had three awes –

Awe of Heaven’s Decree
Awe of great men
Awe of saint’s words

According to Confucianism, our social, economic, political and religious ideals are inseparable and entered in ethics. The blood of life is love, and virtue is its backbone. Without virtue life cannot stand, and without virtue life is death. From the ethics of Confucius we derive five constant ideas – Jen (humaneness), Yi (righteousness), Li (propriety), Chi (wisdom), and Zun (trustworthiness) and five cardinal principles –

The ruler must be respectful and the ruled loyal.
The father merciful and so filial
The husband chivalrous and the wife obedient.
The elder brotherly, and the younger reverent
Friends must be trustworthy in mutuality

Confucius says, “Truth is the law of God. Acquired truth is the law of man.” Truth means the realization of one’s being and moral law means the law of our being. Truth is the beginning and end of existence. It is for this reason that the moral man values truth. Absolute truth is indestructible, eternal, self-existent and infinite.

Actually Confucius wants, through his philosophy, to make the ‘moral man’ who is able to be the ‘Superior man’. A superior man must maintain previously discussed facts and qualities. Additionally, he has to possess some other qualities –

The Superior man of Confucius is composed of three virtues- intelligence, courage and goodwill. He acts before he speaks and afterwards speaks according to his actions.

“He is modest in his speech; but exceeds in his actions: he seldom speaks; when he does he is sure to hit the point. He is moderate in word and deeds and in everything. The superior man conforms to the path of the mean.”

The superior man’s character is an overflowing sympathy towards all man. He is not agreed by the excellence of other men; when he sees a man of low worth he turns inwards and examines himself.

In high position he makes no demands on those beneath him. In low position he has no connection from those above him. He lives simply and correctly and yields himself to the will of God.

“When he is angry he thinks of the difficulties his anger may involve him in. when he thinks gain to be God he thinks of righteousness”. Such men, says Confucius, must be at the helm of family and of the state. Confucius admits rebellion saying that, “When the command is wrong a son should resist his father and a minister should resist the Prince.”

“When asked about government, he said that the requisites of government are true: that there should be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of military equipment and confidence of the people in their ruler.”

Being asked “what do you say to kill the unprincipled for the good of the principled”, he indicated that there is no need of punishment if the ruler is a Superior man. Because the relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.

Confucius also said of making the state independent of supplied by reducing luxuries of counts and seeking a wide distribution of wealth, by decreasing punishment and increasing public instruction without destination of classes, by instructing the people in music.

Thus, Confucius desired to educate dominant personalities, who develop within themselves the force of their individuality, through which they can influence to change others.

Idealism and Materialism: Features, Classification and Differences

2013-03-20T00:40:00.000+06:00

Idealism and Materialism, two forms of the theories of reality, in order to investigate the reality, discuss the problem of the mature of knowledge, and give controversial solution in different forms. Idealism regards mind as the primary reality; and all are grounded in mind. But materialism wants to explain all things by matter and material objects. Let us now discuss idealism and materialism respectively in detail.

Idealism

As a metaphysical theory, Idealism holds that the world is grounded in mind or its basic stuff is mental or spiritual. It regards mind or thought as priori and primary, and matter as derived and secondary or by product of mind. Actually, idealism is opposed to realism, mechanism and all non-idealistic theories of reality, but most directly and strongly to materialism. So, in narrow sense it is also called ‘spiritualism’. But the name ‘Idealism’ has a far greater currency than ‘spiritualism’.

Along with the above mentioned facts, the other general features of Idealism are:

· Idealism advocates a vital force, i.e. God, behind the whole reality

· It says that the clue to the ultimate nature of things is to be sought among the states and processes of our mind, not among material bodies or physical forces.

· Consciousness, thought, intelligence, reason, and our moral and religious ideas are the genuine ingredients of the real, not secondary or subjective.

· “Matter is either illusory or at best a mere externalization of the thought-content or spiritual essence of the reality.”

· Idealism defends morality perfection and some ideals.

· The world is not without a purpose, not ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and furry, but signifying nothing’. It exists as a means to the realization of some external inherent purpose. Thus idealism rejects all mechanical conceptions of evaluation.

· Idealism spiritualizes matter.

· It resolves the whole reality to spirit.

· It reduces matter to spirit.

However, in its long history, idealism has appeared in many different forms by different exponents in ontological, epistemological and metaphysical considerations. “But it must not be forgotten that these different stand points are not without relations but rather often involve each other.”

Now we can mention some of them:

Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism or Mentalism:

Berkeley denies the existence of the ‘external’ objects, and reduces them to the ‘subjective ideas’ of the finite minds that perceive them. According to Berkeley, a clergyman, the so called external objects are sensations produced in the finite minds by God according to fixed laws. He says, “There is nothing in the universe except the infinite spirit and a realm of finite spirit.”

Phenomenalistic Idealism of Kant:

Kant does not deny the existence of ‘things-in-themselves’ or ‘noumena’, but he regards them as unknown and unknowable. We can know only their phenomenal appearances through our own forms and categories.

Absolute Idealism (Objective Idealism): Hegel and others:

Removing the distinction between or dualism of ‘noumena’ and ‘phenomena’ of Kant’s idealism, Hegel admits the reality of the world. But he regards it as an outward ‘expression’ of the ‘Absolute mind’.

Of the many other forms of idealism, now we can mention the names of the Archetypal (objective) Idealism of Plato, the Spiritualism or Monadism of Leibniz, Idealism of Fichte, and Transcendental Idealism of Schellings.

Materialism

Materialism is the ontological theory that regards matter as the only reality, and life and mind as the products of matter. Thus materialism explains all things in material point of view. Simon Blackburn in his Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy defines materialism as “the view that the world is entirely composed of matter”.

According to materialism, the matter the reality or the primary substance, and motion, the primary form of activity of matter, can explain all processes in reality- the physical processes, the vital processes of organisms as well as the mental processes. Even life is a complex physical chemical force; mind is a form, or a function, or an epiphenomenon of the brain which is material. It says that extension and impenetrability are the central attributes of matter.

Other features of materialism:

· Materialism denies the existence of any Vital force, or God. It does not also believe in soul, next world, and supernaturalism.

· The universe is composed of atoms, the minute particles, which have the forces of space, motion, attraction and repulsion.

· It has no question of morality.

· There is no purpose behind the creation of the world. Rather it advocates the mechanical theory of evolution.

· All are governed by the ‘laws of nature’.

· It advocates the theory of ‘abiogenesis’. That is, life evolves out of lifeless matter spontaneously.

· Materialism believes in the law of conversation of Energy. So, light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity and mechanical motion are regarded as convertible to one another.

· Man has no freedom of will.

Matter has been conceived by the materialists in different ways, with different associations and implications.

Hylozoism:

The materialists of early Greece usually ascribed a sort of vitality to matter. Such position-- the position that matter is endowed with life-- is called hylozoism. It is obviously visible even in the nineteenth century thinker, Ernst Haeckel.

Atomism:

The atomistic school, established in early Greece, maintains that the elements of the world are atoms and that …

Dialectical Materialism: Features and Criticism

2013-03-19T22:43:00.000+06:00

Dialectical Materialism was initiated by Karl Marx, a famous socialist and evolutionist, in collaboration with Engels and followed by Lenin and Stalin. According to dialectical materialism, through conflict between ‘thesis’ and ‘antithesis’ there arises ‘synthesis’, a new form. Actually, thesis and antithesis are both the cause and effect of each other, and syntheses are the new situations created by them, and creating their interplay. Up to this dialectical law, Mark adapted the dialectic method of Hegel, but rejected his master’s Absolute Idealism or Objective Idealism, and presented his own view.

Marx says, “My dialectical method is not only different from the Hegelian but its direct opposite.” Thus, the materialist philosophers explain, by dialectical materialism, the evolution or development of the world as the result of struggle between opposite forces.

Other features of dialectical materialism:

# Unlike idealism, by denying the existence of God or the ‘universal spirit’, it says that the world, material in nature, constituting different forms of matter and motion, develops in accordance with the laws of movement of matter.

# Contrary to idealism, matter is primary which is independent of our mind and the source of sensations; while mind is secondary and derivative which is the reflection of matter; thought is the product of matter and the brain is the organ of thought. Lenin says, “Matter is primary and spirit is secondary”, that is it does not admit the existence of any spiritual or metaphysical thing.

# According to Marx, the world process, which is based on motion, attraction, and repulsion and is mechanical, is circular. It moves continually through thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But it is not a closed process.

# Man is not the slave but the master of his fate.

# “Motion is the mode of existence of matter”. Engle’s says “Matter without motion is unthinkable.”

# The dialectical materialists have also used it in economic process- “The Capitalist bourgeoisie possessing capital is the thesis. The destruction of the capitalist bourgeoisie is the antithesis. A classless society will be a new synthesis.”

# It says that moral idea of man is related to their economic condition.

# Knowledge is ‘dynamic’; it changes the subject and the object. All truth is relative and pragmatic; what is true for the worker may be false for the capitalist. The conflict of truths can be resolved by force. Similarly, there are no abstract rights and justice. Rights and justice prevailing in a society are a reflection of the particular class that dominates it.

# Unlike Hegel, Marx regards the individual as merely a means to the development of the society which is the real human unit. So human thinking must be collective.

Criticism:

Like materialism, dialectical materialism also has many defects. The attempt to justify all by matter is not satisfactory to a man with a mind. Next, by denying individuality, freedom of will, standard of truth, morality; by considering mind as reflection and thought as the product of matter, it has fully destroyed our mental and spiritual faith. It has hurt the religious faith by denying the existence of God. Though it has satisfied the working class, it is actually not a successfully philosophical doctrine.

Some other features of dialectical materialism at a glance:

· It denies the existence of God or the ‘universal spirit’. Lenin says, “Matter is primary and spirit is secondary” thus it does not admit the existence of any spiritual or metaphysical thing.

· “Motion is the mode of existence of matter.” Engle’s says “Matter without motion is unthinkable.”

· According to Marx, the world process is circular. It moves continually through thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But it is not a closed process.

· Man is not the slave but the master of his fate.

· It also says that through conflict between capitalist (thesis) and working class (antithesis), there will be a classless society (synthesis), through a world revolution.

· Moral idea of men is related to their economic condition.

· Knowledge is ‘dynamic’; it changes the subject and the object.

· All truth is pragmatic and relative; the conflict of truths can be resolved by force.

· Right and justice, prevailing in a society, are a reflection of the particular class that dominates them.

· Unlike Hegel, Marx regards the individual as merely a part of the society, the real human unit.

· It conceives the ultimate reality as matter and not as a spirit.